RateBeer mired in technological glitches
As the scandal of AB-InBev secretly buying into RateBeer continues to spread, a statistician took a long hard look at how RateBeer arrives at its Brewer Rating. Guess what did he find? The statistics seem to be suspect.
Paste magazine has the full story and it can be found here: pastemagazine
What was discovered after a bit of sleuthing is that AB-InBev’s Brewer Rating somewhat miraculously improved between the autumn of 2016, when AB-InBev bought into RateBeer, and now. It had a rating of 74/100 then, whereas today it stands at 90/100.
A random check on Molson Coors brought to light an even higher score. Its Brewer Rating was 68/100 in October 2016 and has shot up to 93/100 since.
You can follow the mathematical analysis on Paste in detail, but the gist of the matter is that, whereas in AB-InBev’s case the better rating is only improbable, in Molson Coors’ case it’s statistically impossible.
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
When Paste approached RateBeer, they were told that the Brewer Rating is currently broken and that RateBeer’s techies were unaware that the problem existed. RateBeer promised that the problem will be fixed in an upcoming update.
They say that numbers don’t lie. Well, after the RateBeer debacle we may have to pull that one into doubt too.
