In the beginning, there was a simple 5 point scale, divided into quarter point increments. And this was used for rating my shaves. It worked for its time, but was seemingly imprecise and didn’t quite capture what I was really looking to capture in rating my shaves.
Then it became a rating of both comfort and closeness, 25 point scale each, averaged and rounded down. 25 was a perfect shave. 23 and 24 were almost perfect. And it went down from there. (You can read about that change here.)
I’ve been playing with this for a bit, even enlisting some AI consultation, and have ended up with a new rating system that feels more realistic and adaptive to shaves with poor comfort but high quality. Or vice versa. And factors in a new subjective rating. I’ve been keeping a new spreadsheet with the new ratings on it for all of the shaves for a couple of week, and have found it to be more accurate and subjective, especially in comparison to the ratings kept using the old system in that spreadsheet.
Comfort and Quality remain as rating categories. But now, the rating range for each is 10 points (or actually 11, with a rating of 0-10). 10 obviously is perfect. No irritation for the comfort rating, and absolutely BBS (baby butt smooth) for quality. For the moment, this feels right to me: arguing the difference in my head between a 22 or 23 for comfort seemed almost impossible. On a 10 point scale, it’s more percentage or decimal-based. A 9 is almost perfect. An 8 is not quite as perfect. 7 starts getting into far less perfect territory. Like for comfort, a 7 would be some minor but lingering irritation. A 5 is some pretty strong irritation. 5 is also going to have some noticeable stubble left behind.
It just seems more realistic and definable to me.
Here comes the new one: Satisfaction. When the rating category was introduced to me by the AI agent, it suggested that I use the question “would I want to shave with this combination again” as the guiding question. But I’ve decided to just kind of be blunt and vague about it: “how satisfied am I with the overall shave?” This arguable throws out all objectivity, and to a point it does, but it also allows for some balance in the overall rating of just trying to quantify comfort and quality in a shave.
Of course, I’m quantifying satisfaction, but whatever. Get your own shave rating system.
Satisfaction, though, only has a 5 point scale (0-5). A 5 is obviously extremely satisfied–proud and happy with the shave, and very happy with how it went. A 4 is less satisfied, but still happy with it. A 3 is just okay. 2 and 1 are the meh and nope.
Add up the three numbers and you’re back to the 25 point scale, which fits nicely in the comparative statistics I’ve been keeping in the spreadsheet. And dealing with the sudden change in ratings, while still somewhat problematic, isn’t quite as troublesome. I can still draw some parallels, but know that the rating is probably closer to the mark.
Here’s an example: In the week of shaves with the Lord Super Stainless, the first two shaves had some irritation, and I needed to work at the closeness. Under the old rating system, they got a 23 and 22 overall respectively. Comfort and Quality were the same score, and I realized that I kind of got stuck having to give those ratings because there wasn’t wiggle room for nuance. Honestly, both shaves were pretty similar. There was more irritation than I wanted, but not enough to call them bad shaves. But I realized that I don’t want to really call something a bad shave unless it really is, and I just don’t have bad shaves these days…Just varying degrees of great, good, and not quite as good shaves.
Both of these shaves responded well to the new rating system, and didn’t make me feel bad about giving them what turned out to be worse ratings than the previous system gave them. They feel more honest and true to the experience. Compared to the 23 and 22 under the old system, they got a 21 (8-9-4) and 19 (7-8-4).
In these new ratings, the comfort score of an 8 and 7 was a lot more honest and accurate. The 4 accurately described my slight disappointment at the shaves. But the quality benefitted the most: I can almost always achieve a perfect close BBS shave. But the price to be paid is that comfort. I put more effort into the second shave, and still didn’t quite get the closeness I wanted, and I paid the price with more irritation.
This felt right, especially after a week of shaves where both scores came out the same across all three shaves.
So that’s the plan: go forward starting next week with the new ratings. Maybe have some lower numbers, but realize that they’re more accurate and subjective to the shave.
The bonus is that I’ll be debuting them in a shave week I’m particularly looking for, as I pair the GameChanger with the Martin de Candre soaps.
