Studio Albums

Participants in the poll were asked to rank the 8 studio albums (including Wonderland) in order of preference, by ranking their favorite album as "1", their second favorite as "2," etc. 98 of the 122 who ranked the albums provided a ranking for every album. The other 24 ranked only some of the albums, presumably because they are not familiar with all of them. Including the votes of these 24 would arguably "shortchange" the albums they didn't rank (in their comparisons with the other albums) as the albums would have scores of "0". On the other hand, it seems unfair to ignore someone's opinion simply because he or she hasn't bought every Big Country album.

So, I present you with two analyses, as well as a graph of the raw vote count. One analysis includes all 122 participants (this is the one used in the Poll Summary), and the other includes only the 98 who ranked every album. The results are fairly similar in both, with only "Wonderland" and "Buffalo Skinners" having different rankings in the two analyses. The scores in the tables below were generated using a weighted scale. When someone ranked an album as "1," it earned 8 points, a ranking of "2" earned 7 points, etc. The total score for each album was then divided by the number of people who provided votes for that album. This makes no difference in the analysis of those who ranked every album, but in the other analysis this helps to compensate for the "0" votes. (email me if you want a more complete explanation).

Graph of the Votes

Album Rankings
(including incomplete rankings)

Album Rankings
(complete rankings only)