Are online reviews fair? Consider these reviews of a small printer, the Canon Pixma MG6320 on the Consumer Reports website. At the time I am writing, there are three reviews, and all three writers gave it one star out of a possible five—the worst possible rating. The review titles are:

• “Piece of junk”
• “Unreliable and unbelievably expensive”
• “The worst printer ever.”

 On the other hand, on Amazon.com the same printer currently has 464 reviews, and it gets an average of four out of five stars. Sample review titles include:

• “Amazing printer”
• “Made a great gift”
• “A very good buy”

There are also negative reviews of course (“I wish I could give it minus stars”), but the consensus is four-star positive.

What is going on here? You could speculate that it’s just a matter of randomness and numbers—the three reviews are too small of a sample to matter, and…