30

Just the other day I happened to notice that Jon Skeet has more badges than I have rep. Ouch.

So how much rep does the average SO user have?

Improve this question
5
  • 11
    Also, what is the median & standard deviation?
    – Pete
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 3:57
  • 1
    @Pete: The standard deviation will be large (probably quite a bit larger than the mean) because the distribution of rep scores is highly skewed, and anything but 'Normal' (which is what mean and standard deviation are most useful for characterizing).
    – Jonathan Leffler
    Commented Dec 15, 2013 at 20:14
  • There are roughly 1.5 M users with rep of 1; there are roughly 1.2 M users with a larger rep. ...Is it just me, or is there a problem accessing statoverflow.com? I'm getting blblm.ly pages in various forms...
    – Jonathan Leffler
    Commented Dec 31, 2013 at 0:44
  • 1
    ...which means the median rep is 1!
    – AndrewC
    Commented Feb 21, 2014 at 16:01
  • Currently he is on 9,714 badges (254 + 4011 + 5449) to save people the bother of looking.
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Feb 21, 2014 at 17:06

7 Answers 7

Reset to default
25

According to the June data dump...

Select Avg(reputation) From users

...it's 182.93 (using Kyle's sqlite import of the dump).

Ian's excellent statoverflow tool OTOH, produces 194.0018

Ian also suggests excluding users with a reputation of 1. With that done, you could say that the average reputation, for users who have reputation, is 358.9613!

Improve this answer
19
  • Is that registered users only?
    – phenry
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 3:24
  • Did you use statoverflow?
    – jjnguy
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 3:25
  • statoverflow gives me 194.0018. WTH?
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 3:27
  • of course, this would be heavily weighted by the large number of users with a reputation of 1
    – a_m0d
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 3:29
  • 2
    I come up with a different answer for June, statoverflow.com/sandbox/… . Not sure whose side the error lies on. Also, a somewhat more accurate portrait of the average, statoverflow.com/sandbox/…
    – Ian Elliott
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 3:29
  • Oh - and i used Kyle's sqlite import to get the result in the answer.
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 3:31
  • @Ian: ah - so that's how you make a link to it!
    – Shog9
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 3:32
  • 9
    Select Avg(reputation) FROM users WHERE reputation > 100 - 923.7
    – jjnguy
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 3:34
  • Those are the people I consider to be active users.
    – jjnguy
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 3:35
  • The error could be in my side, I'll be re-factoring everything in a few days. Also the linking is kind of a hack ATM, I've integrated it along with some other things which I'll upload after I'm done midterms since I'm not completely done and the two versions are incompatible. /offtopic
    – Ian Elliott
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 3:38
  • @Ian: I haven't released a SQLite version of the latest dump, so it's a difference of old data/new data. However, this post has given me the push I needed to get back to work on it ;-)
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 4:06
  • Good point on the 'active users' jinguy. But the rep value where people are considered to be active is always going to be difficult to agree on ; )
    – Dhaust
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 4:24
  • 3
    if you exclude users with 1 rep - or less than 100 rep - as outliers, then you must also exclude outliers like Jon Skeet!
    – Steven A. Lowe
    Commented Jul 23, 2009 at 13:15
  • 1
    Select Avg(reputation) FROM users WHERE reputation between 100 and 30000 = ~886
    – Dave Jarvis
    Commented Jul 30, 2009 at 16:27
  • 1
    Wow, so there are a huge number of 1-100-point users in the dataset, then, since excluding Skeet should bring the number down, not up.
    – Dan Rosenstark
    Commented Sep 16, 2009 at 1:08
9

The median is 1 which makes sense as more than half of the registered users have a reputation of 1.

Excluding users with reputation of 1 or less, the median was 21 which seemed skewed. Then, I checked the median between 100 and 100,000 which is 351. Click here to see the median query in action.

Improve this answer
6

I think the Median rep would tell you more than the mean.

(There are many types of averages to choose from.)

You may wish to exclude users with only 1 rep, or to exclude all users that have never ask a question or given an answer.

Improve this answer
1
  • 5
    As Jonathan Leffler said, "There are roughly 1.5 M users with rep of 1; there are roughly 1.2 M users with a larger rep.", which makes the median rep 1, so I think we definitely want to exclude users with only 1 rep.
    – AndrewC
    Commented Feb 21, 2014 at 16:04
6

Using Data Explorer (which was created some time after this question was posted), I executed Shog9 query to get result of: 132

Looks like the average reputation in ever decreasing, with more and more new users added.

Link to the query: https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/153748/average-reputation

Improve this answer
6

Average reputation per site (excluding 1-rep users):

Site               Average Reputation              
------------------ ------------------ 
Rpg                380.896800360523 
Judaism            367.013747851898 
Tridion            355.438338658147 
StackOverflow      342.962973446654 
Mathematica        292.631035395887 
Esperanto          289.246674727932 
Worldbuilding      283.149994043128 
Scifi              275.862784571563 
Mathoverflow       267.913434538435 
Ukrainian          261.556834532374 
Aviation           253.848829227366 
Latin              250.659415786203 
Codegolf           248.268802117803 
Tex                248.059176406843 
Academia           231.178213989494 
Math               228.009432619363 
Sitecore           227.675352877307 
Puzzling           223.461303744799 
Japanese           222.226624405705 
Outdoors           220.847722457627 
Workplace          219.188751025686 
Portuguese         211.52183908046  
Christianity       205.38387776607  
History            204.62021498724  
Space              198.183602026716 
German             197.443213296399 
Interpersonal      195.731241473397 
Skeptics           194.622505288329 
Hinduism           193.787536689998 
Matheducators      190.681415929204 
Retrocomputing     185.316243411596 
Craftcms           184.970033296337 
Politics           184.668437741023 
Movies             184.604815154803 
Buddhism           183.24905944319  
Boardgames         181.040096497796 
French             180.034684284081 
Travel             179.81360888514  
Salesforce         179.608583560813 
Italian            179.082793709528 
StackOverflow.Br   177.807121968003 
Rus                177.739593188269 
Ell                176.30374221067  
Programmers        175.724853886616 
Literature         175.238562091503 
Gaming             175.062327054262 
Gardening          173.58190433213  
Spanish            172.60656        
Emacs              171.812457221081 
Hermeneutics       170.029044701611 
Korean             167.872703412073 
English            166.944699814731 
Russian            166.212701829925 
Woodworking        165.894841269841 
Physics            165.752076493638 
Mythology          164.913676547062 
Conlang            164.135857461025 
Vegetarian         163.677011494253 
Photography        163.510267951333 
Electronics        161.760237770102 
Money              159.83380856717  
Parenting          159.795720473204 
StackOverflow.Ru   156.665450366906 
Monero             156.313741064337 
Earthscience       156.247386030949 
Anime              156.227765498369 
Unix               155.03663209114  
Cstheory           154.855162404284 
Bicycles           154.662792091073 
Genealogy          153.846758349705 
Security           153.664761759626 
Expressionengine   152.141109530583 
Chemistry          151.260917756595 
Writers            150.631227758007 
Cooking            150.411435850258 
Homebrew           150.22299713877  
Ux                 150.094329007576 
Chess              149.483276718056 
Music              149.206871977602 
Biology            148.476739992788 
Hsm                146.931538911644 
Bioinformatics     145.424812030075 
Martialarts        145.233644859813 
Drupal             144.225385394396 
Sustainability     143.625737079431 
Astronomy          143.61955101556  
Sports             142.956076909508 
Magento            142.673872466033 
Vi                 141.67311297484  
Chinese            141.096966839541 
ServerFault        140.913818308388 
Moderators         140.515702479339 
Cseducators        140.327373974209 
Linguistics        137.826613458098 
SuperUser          137.568870907422 
Codereview         137.552987258463 
Languagelearning   136.567279193835 
Philosophy         136.188057413601 
GameDev            135.038881824684 
Pets               133.834443874936 
Bricks             133.395333624073 
Joomla             133.310344827586 
Fitness            131.920280404304 
Quantumcomputing   131.704301075269 
Opensource         131.693249387898 
Crafts             131.487951807229 
Civicrm            130.971594577147 
Scicomp            130.706301005883 
Dba                129.637765301931 
Crypto             128.641889738687 
Stats              128.617804483943 
Computergraphics   128.585358535854 
Iota               128.27027027027  
Blender            127.952485619417 
Cogsci             127.631090790333 
Lifehacks          127.571157070989 
Iot                127.096389532958 
Law                126.78962071559  
Ham                126.452714535902 
Gis                126.363103060777 
Cs                 126.065317919075 
Ubuntu             125.767558821144 
Pm                 125.151844843898 
Augur              124.190594059406 
Garage             123.375646754468 
Beer               123.169688676018 
Productivity       123.094235142885 
Coffee             123.051127819549 
Sharepoint         122.493819128172 
Arabic             122.266666666667 
Ethereum           122.167412458271 
Wordpress          120.833908452168 
Poker              120.724418175102 
StackApps          120.718829516539 
Diy                120.505026415094 
Devops             120.448140387638 
Economics          120.022150363783 
Quant              119.374064618364 
Stellar            119.211505922166 
Sound              117.487288717878 
Dsp                117.262067990671 
Bitcoin            116.833814538043 
Webmasters         116.331480075437 
Reverseengineering 116.188911268949 
Apple              116.171687393842 
Sqa                114.666567052671 
Islam              114.493077026482 
Health             114.0065         
Networkengineering 113.591218495125 
Musicfans          113.280186791194 
Graphicdesign      113.245781747897 
Engineering        113.245210727969 
3dprinting         113.240056022409 
Eosio              113.049356223176 
Ebooks             112.217233686559 
Freelancing        111.826995179432 
Startups           110.12411145863  
Softwarerecs       109.864672435105 
StackOverflow.Ja   109.434437086093 
WebApps            109.178229398664 
Hardwarerecs       108.734008397135 
Opendata           108.045674183157 
Expatriates        107.397599126955 
Windowsphone       106.380011850681 
Robotics           105.259125667292 
StackOverflow.Es   104.353852967228 
Ai                 103.993401105761 
Audio              103.031886812375 
Datascience        102.671692060946 
Raspberrypi        102.441194512603 
Android            102.122352289683 
Arduino            99.1536896968156 
Patents            92.7367159971811 
Elementaryos       84.2816474863719 
Tor                83.3370295698925

Source: Stack Exchange Data Explorer

Average reputation per site (including 1-rep users):

Site               Average Reputation              
------------------ ------------------
Tridion            256.384898710866 
Rpg                239.110629884192 
Judaism            237.604120379721 
Esperanto          183.108479755539 
Scifi              173.002894821486 
Mathematica        167.153938997712 
Worldbuilding      165.280868479467 
Latin              159.025963808025 
Outdoors           153.740570377185 
Codegolf           150.779978191848 
Mathoverflow       149.864361571967 
Tex                144.745881028336 
Workplace          141.004100453124 
Aviation           136.310244897959 
Skeptics           135.930780323666 
Retrocomputing     134.218354978355 
Puzzling           129.035708583897 
Matheducators      128.877423728814 
Gardening          125.909447211562 
Ukrainian          125.117203564085 
History            124.39549161121  
Space              122.663616210993 
Math               121.619355455846 
Interpersonal      121.352445193929 
Boardgames         120.943582354245 
Politics           119.390708722311 
Japanese           117.34772462077  
Academia           116.270761221721 
Sitecore           115.707692307692 
Travel             114.0940745483   
Parenting          113.964405610485 
Craftcms           113.932720149889 
StackOverflow      110.798621377526 
German             109.979603241129 
Conlang            109.515555555556 
Literature         109.493895348837 
Emacs              107.006513274336 
Woodworking        102.535736102627 
Movies             100.75455101902  
Money              99.9109747977159 
French             97.638458373337  
Homebrew           97.3573903002309 
Bicycles           96.5739733174331 
Cooking            96.5484002353261 
Portuguese         96.3927083333333 
Gaming             96.2574218939799 
Expressionengine   95.3960554371002 
Buddhism           94.9644381223329 
Photography        94.901718953186  
Programmers        94.4045873673604 
Sports             93.8949555581207 
Vegetarian         93.3818537859008 
Cstheory           92.7254960465463 
Italian            92.6920695403668 
Christianity       91.6992284311433 
Cseducators        91.1545609709843 
Russian            91.0825214227022 
Ux                 91.063959942905  
Spanish            90.0740802258949 
Earthscience       90.0159472422062 
Ell                89.8374959893274 
Pets               89.5512528473804 
Salesforce         89.1105985037406 
Civicrm            88.8385689354276 
Hinduism           88.6019287986047 
Martialarts        87.0826215792226 
Vi                 86.9489992765855 
Writers            86.6887020761686 
Bricks             86.6368124118477 
Music              86.4245224892175 
Fitness            86.2420125252096 
Korean             86.2258713136729 
Chess              86.2070025491078 
Security           85.8899387057594 
Law                84.8567437862617 
Mythology          83.1490747980193 
Moderators         82.447732389836  
Hsm                82.3560593704127 
Codereview         82.2956676179695 
Unix               82.0273657671189 
Linguistics        80.1151336728199 
Biology            79.9814916148968 
Sustainability     79.7569431143459 
Physics            79.2586867314893 
Genealogy          79.1114457831325 
Philosophy         77.4558064389014 
English            77.3426812806089 
ServerFault        77.2588534368978 
Garage             77.031598173516  
GameDev            76.4559943629836 
Dba                75.5186407335724 
Opensource         75.174094292804  
Electronics        74.6878921323161 
Gis                73.3433096656482 
Chinese            72.9945889193991 
Drupal             72.872837809859  
Crypto             72.8618972863871 
Quantumcomputing   72.2932551319648 
Poker              72.1044317683194 
Pm                 72.0174979705962 
Rus                71.6423709585933 
Expatriates        71.6149203283438 
Monero             71.2118491921005 
Arabic             71.1034482758621 
Productivity       70.7868648618098 
Softwarerecs       70.6129501406937 
Astronomy          70.469682943763  
Webmasters         70.4451752768888 
Scicomp            70.365389495052  
Diy                70.240257468691  
Sound              68.3615702479339 
Bioinformatics     68.3509817671809 
Health             67.8677514792899 
Anime              67.3525891933234 
Magento            67.2769271383316 
Joomla             66.9278350515464 
Beer               66.64375         
Cogsci             66.2460792892239 
Lifehacks          65.1788447366929 
Computergraphics   65.1293922485296 
StackOverflow.Ru   64.5399509561897 
Chemistry          64.0331519970242 
Blender            63.8851232394366 
Cs                 63.776299428003  
Sharepoint         63.7758508176946 
Audio              63.7048212315878 
SuperUser          63.0993118971757 
Devops             63.0649156232989 
Hardwarerecs       62.9887736251243 
Reverseengineering 62.6952645923234 
Crafts             62.0685085988159 
StackApps          62.0257154941492 
Coffee             61.6720239207625 
Stats              61.4392550742833 
Opendata           61.3712042564236 
Languagelearning   61.3276180427328 
Musicfans          61.1637176050045 
Quant              60.8189785568111 
Dsp                60.0809898358654 
Startups           60.0718023703248 
Iot                59.8112158195582 
Economics          59.2583095916429 
StackOverflow.Br   58.9769058068301 
Sqa                58.1342145780916 
Apple              57.9026255883942 
Hermeneutics       57.2706602205771 
Freelancing        56.1550046648007 
Ham                55.0154580872188 
Patents            54.8489286009763 
Engineering        54.3972139044395 
Wordpress          53.4781975421029 
Islam              52.6376146788991 
Ebooks             52.53443597364   
Iota               52.3115403665181 
Raspberrypi        52.1462934585483 
Graphicdesign      51.7282299474709 
Networkengineering 51.7189226519337 
Ubuntu             50.9964603435297 
Robotics           50.5794168096055 
WebApps            49.9785469395987 
Stellar            49.4823039555864 
Bitcoin            46.9689285052319 
Ethereum           46.6212660123553 
Datascience        45.3975487335123 
Arduino            44.4364311431143 
3dprinting         42.1773712876374 
Ai                 41.7597402597403 
Augur              41.4955248169243 
Windowsphone       40.1042949281736 
Android            39.7904892282455 
StackOverflow.Ja   39.0140460850891 
Elementaryos       36.3980949111817 
Tor                35.1298140539035 
Eosio              31.5708430913349 
StackOverflow.Es   26.6384975952736

Source: Stack Exchange Data Explorer

Improve this answer
1
  • 3
    Please link to the SEDE query so that we can also see updated results, this data won't be relevant in a year or so.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jul 1, 2018 at 9:18
3

Using the query from Shadow Wizard slightly modified as of this writing returns an average of 125 over about 4M users:

select avg(reputation), count(*) from users

The score at the top of the third quartile is 11:

with tmp as (
      select reputation, qt=NTILE(4) over (order by reputation), 
      rn=ROW_NUMBER() over (order by reputation)
      from users)
select reputation
from tmp
where rn in (select max(rn) from tmp group by qt)

Looking at just the top ~1M users with scores higher than 11, the quartile maxima are 23, 51, 164, and 759633:

with tmp as (
      select reputation, qt=NTILE(4) over (order by reputation), 
      rn=ROW_NUMBER() over (order by reputation)
      from users where reputation > 11)
select reputation
from tmp
where rn in (select max(rn) from tmp group by qt)

So, if you have a score higher than 164 you are in the top 1/16 of all users, a select group of about 250K people.

Improve this answer
1

With BigQuery - avg reputation (geometric mean) per tag - and top user for each tag:

enter image description here

Compare with only 2017 and beyond:

enter image description here

#standardSQL 
SELECT top_tag.value, COUNT(*) people_answering
  , ROUND(EXP(AVG(LOG(GREATEST(1,reputation)))),2) avg_reputation_geo
  , ARRAY_AGG(STRUCT(display_name AS user, reputation) ORDER BY reputation DESC LIMIT 1) top_answering
FROM (
  SELECT display_name, APPROX_TOP_COUNT(tag, 1)[OFFSET(0)] top_tag, ANY_VALUE(reputation) reputation, COUNT(*) answers
  FROM (
    SELECT tag, reputation, a.display_name
    FROM `bigquery-public-data.stackoverflow.users` a
    JOIN `bigquery-public-data.stackoverflow.posts_answers` b
    ON a.id=b.owner_user_id 
    JOIN `bigquery-public-data.stackoverflow.posts_questions`  c
    ON parent_id=c.id
    CROSS JOIN UNNEST(SPLIT(c.tags, '|')) tag
  )
  GROUP BY 1
)
GROUP BY 1
HAVING people_answering>20000
ORDER BY 3 DESC

Why the geometric mean? See BigQuery SQL: Average, geometric mean, remove outliers, median

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .