Easy Come Easy Gaughin

A friend of mine expressed amusement that Jack Bruce could be listed above Led Zeppelin in the overall achievement list that I posted last week. It’s a math thing that I could not resist explaining.

Remember, the idea is to assess the ratings listed in The Virgin Encyclopedia of 70’s Music.

In the “Best 5″ rating, the artists are tied; they each have a classic 5-star disc (gotta get me that Songs For a Tailor), and then they each have 4 4-star discs, so they are tied in that regard with 21 total stars.

So we move over to the “Overall above average” rating. Here’s one way to understand how this comparison works. We will remove one album from each artist with matching ratings, then assess what’s left over at the end. Here’s how those match up.

Now the trick is to look at what’s left. Every Led Zeppelin disc is accounted for, but Jack Bruce has 5 discs left. They are these;

Now the deal is, we have effectively “subtracted” Led Zeppelin’s critical ratings from Jack Bruce’s, leaving Bruce with 5 discs and 14 total stars. This gives an average of 2.8. But this average is higher than the overall average for all of the albums in the book, which is about 2.76. Since Jack Bruce is above average even after the equivalent of Led Zeppelin’s discography is extracted from his, Jack Bruce squeaks out a “win”. If his remaining discs had average under 2.76; ie, if he had 5 remaining discs and only 13 total stars, Led Zeppelin would have “won”.

Here’s the quicker version of that “logic”, though it’s not as dramatic. Led Zeppelin has a total of 11 albums in its discography. The average artist with 11 albums would have a total of 11*2.76 = 30.36 total stars; Led Zeppelin has 39, so they are 8.64 stars above the average artist.

Jack Bruce has a total of 16 albums. The average artist with 16 stars would have a total of 16*2.76 = 44.16 total stars; Jack Bruce has 53, so he is 8.84 stars above the average artist.

Jack Bruce by a hair!