How to balance number of ratings versus the ratings themselves?

Question

For a school project, we\'ll have to implement a ranking system. However, we figured that a dumb rank average would suck: something that one user ranked 5 stars wou

Answer 1

A simple solution might be a weighted average:

sum(votes) / number_of_votes

That way, 3 people voting 1 star, and one person voting 5 would give a weighted average of (1+1+1+5)/4 = 2 stars.

Simple, effective, and probably sufficient for your purposes.