U2 Catalog: The Ultimate Ranking Survey

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LuckyNumber7

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Hi all,

After so many years on Interference I've gotten to know how much we all love to share our Top 10's. Your top U2 songs, your favorite albums, your favorite U2 eras, etc. etc.

So, I figured instead of asking the same question over again, why don't we as a group of fans see what we think of collectively? I'm proposing something a bit wild - a large data project where you get to go through and rank approximately all of U2's songs on a scale from 1 to 10; 10 being flawless, 5 being ok, and 1 being a really bad song, with varying amounts of good and bat in between.

As I'm currently caught between two lives, I have a lot of extra time on my hands, and have already set up the playing field via means of Excel and Python to not only create a sample of all of the songs in order from best to worst, but also search for interesting trends across various demographics (age, gender, nationality, poster count, etc.), and search for interesting trends across albums, eras, release types, etc. etc.

This project is an opportunity to create a unique result - does Interference (and assumedly thereby big U2 fans) generally agree on a ranking of songs? Are there any interesting trends across demographics and the way we value U2's music? Do we as a group have a consensus on which albums are the best and which are the worst?

The survey itself will take some time for you to complete. You're more than welcome to rank songs without listening to them, however if you do not know a song you are obliged to listen to it to get an opinion, as every question on a survey must be answered for your data set to be valid (and thereby validate data sets on songs/albums/etc.). It will take time, but if enough people are willing to join in, it can produce some cool results!

If you are interested please respond to this thread. Surveys will be distributed via google drive or via email, but your responses are kept anonymous in the presentation of the results. For everyone interested, would you please indicate whether or not you wish to wait for the release of Songs of Experience to be included in this project? I'm hesitant, as I know songs sometimes "grow" on people or fall out of favor in time.

When time comes, I will carefully detail the ground rules for the survey and what's what. But again, please post if you're interested and willing to participate!
 
You should set up a donation page!
Seriously this is a grand idea, I can't wait to analyse the results.
I told my wife a rocket-scientist-U2-fan was setting this big data project up. She looked genuinely sad. Like she just realised she missed out on so much by not being a U2 fan.

So, in short, thank you LN7.
 
I'm in.

Past experience from various Survivor tournaments suggests new albums get a sizeable boost when any sort of competition or ranking event is run within a couple of months of release. So I say leave it out for now. Once opinions settle you could do a small SOE survey this time next year and get a more stable result.
 
i don't think SOE should be included.


Would be absolutely pointless to include it. The new album should never even be on these things until about a year after it lands...every new album here on Interference gets super high praise and then over time is basically met with a shrug from most of the users. Let the excitement fall back down to earth before including it.

Although, weirdly, the rather tepid response to the tracks we've heard so far from SOE has me believing that it might actually fare better in the long run as it can't really seem to sink much lower. It's possible there's some true standouts on that LP, but we won't know for another few weeks.



And obviously, I am interested in taking the survey.
 
I'm going to be an alternative voice.. I think that SOE should be included. Why not? It could just be on its own and not compared to other tracks. It'd be interesting to then do it again at a later date and see how opinions change in time.
 
I'm going to be an alternative voice.. I think that SOE should be included. Why not? It could just be on its own and not compared to other tracks. It'd be interesting to then do it again at a later date and see how opinions change in time.



This is an interesting point, however, it does mean we would have to wait a while (and I think we have a real head of steam right now, judging the overwhelming support so far).

Also, if we did want to compare results, it would mean everyone (the same subjects) would have to have to take the survey over again. Otherwise, I'd need to run hypothesis testing to see whether or not the change in the future was due to randomness or due to actual change in attitudes. Which is sort of a mess. Still open to more opinions on the matter, but, withholding it might be easier.
 
Yes, keen to get involved.
Great work Lucky Numbers for putting this out there.

I don't mind either way regarding Songs of Experience.
 
In please. Great idea.

I think SOE should be left alone for now. But if you could do a similar thing for just SOE songs after about a year and then incorporate the results of that into this survey, that will be the balls
 
Count me in

SOE shouldn't be in it's to soon, I mean if you had included nloth in something like this when that came out I'd probably give 90% of the songs a 10 now I wouldn't even grade it :) bar 3 songs
 
I hesitate to say yes, but I get the impression that my opinions don't fit with most others around here, so maybe that would add some interesting data. Count me in.

And no to SOE. New albums get rated highly right away just because they're new; accurate, long-term impressions take longer to reveal themselves.
 
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