Help with finding an Average Rating Winner

Hi,

I have a rating system set up on my website and I have a database that calculated for each item the average rating (out of 5 stars) and the total number of votes.

So say if a viewer picks 5/5 then their average is 5 out of 1 vote

However if I were to want to pick a top 3 for example why should an item with only 1 vote be at the top when somebody with 4 stars and 59 votes be placed below?

Is there a way to calculate a good "rating leader" using these two values?

or if not could you please provide me with another value that I could try and capture that may sort this out?

Cheers in advance!

www.robkent.co.uk
&
www.writersareborn.com

Nevermind!

I think i'll just have a threshold so that when the amount of votes is greater than say, 10. The person with the best average wins.

Then i'll probably have draw conditions etc but i'll have a think about that.

Cheers for looking anyway!

www.robkent.co.uk
&
www.writersareborn.com