Statistics - Is that a 'four letter word?'

[Bramblethorn]

Did you/should you average your ratings stand alone or normalized? For example, with a story rated a 5 with 3 votes and a story rated 3 with 7 votes, is your average (5+3)/2=4 or is it (5*3+3*7)/10=3.6?

Terminology nitpick: this is "weighting" rather than "normalisation".

Normalisation is about adjusting a score to reflect how unusual it is for its category - basically "grading on a curve". In a Lit context, normalisation would be for things like trying to figure out whether a 4.8 in Loving Wives was more impressive than a 4.85 in SF/F.

Weighting is when you give one score more influence than another - as here, where you've let each story influence the overall average in proportion to their number of votes.