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Topic: What's the deal with grades always going from 1 to X instead of 0 to X?

Anonymous 1e4a342d6e16bd64067272030440567b started this discussion 3 months (2008-09-07 12:49:20 UTC) ago:

Is it to "not be too mean" or something? I don't wanna give a movie 1/5 or 1/10 if it was worthless. I want to give it zero points.

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Anonymous 71f0dd3021132f751996af8f5f7a6891 replied with this 3 months (2008-09-07 15:21:29 UTC) ago, 3 hours later (#58,181):

You can. Who says you can't? This is basic mathematics. The concept of zero was discovered many, many years ago.

Anonymous 1e4a342d6e16bd64067272030440567b (OP) replied with this 3 months (2008-09-07 15:24:25 UTC) ago, 3 minutes later (#58,182):

@58,181

Uh… IMDb.com says I can't, for example.

Anonymous 506411247b0f9a71bdf822db5d19d2c6 replied with this 3 months (2008-09-07 15:52:45 UTC) ago, 28 minutes later (#58,193):

I saw in the newspaper a few days ago that a movie got 0/5 stars.

Anonymous 86b7d8cf4f12a14092f04bf72184cd16 replied with this 3 months (2008-09-07 19:23:30 UTC) ago, 4 hours later (#58,236):

In Russia, school grades go from 5 to 0 (not a meme, I'm serious)

Anonymous 1a8d32fdacd445b3bae79326135dace7 replied with this 3 months (2008-09-07 19:40:39 UTC) ago, 17 minutes later (#58,245):

I guess it's because if you use a scale from 1 to X, there are X different possibilities (assuming you use whole integers), while with 0 to X there are X+1. Maybe it's some technical limitation on some systems. Maybe it's because the expression is "in a scale from one to X…". Maybe people don't like the concept of zero.

Anonymous 1cc40b29e1c4821c4d47d1a8451b9659 replied with this 3 months (2008-09-08 01:40:58 UTC) ago, 6 hours later (#58,371):

I think X (in Y/X) defines the possible length. Therefore in 1/10, there are 10 possibilities for values. Using a 0 value here would exceed the length, making it 11 possibilities. Not that it really matters, but that is probably why.