2.3.1.6. Notion of weight for the consumers. In theory, a large confidence ellipse means that the product is associated with a large variability. In our case, a large variability can be interpreted in two
ways: - the consumer considered is associated with a large ideal area;
- the consumer considered has difficulties rating stable ideals.
In practice, it is impossible defining a threshold above which a
confidence ellipse would be considered as large as well as determining the reason of this variability. However, a consumer associated with a large (vs. small) confidence ellipse has a stronger
influence (resp. lower) in the construction of the IdMap. Indeed, a
larger (resp. smaller) area of the sensory space is covered.
For that reason, it might be worthwhile homogenizing consumers. To do so, each consumer is associated with a weight which is
inversely proportional to the size of its corresponding ellipse. Each
weighted consumer is thus associated with an ellipse of area equal
to one unit which is spread on the sensory space: