Ed Mintz, a mathematician who developed a film exit polling system called CinemaScore, where moviegoers leaving theaters on opening nights can grade the movies they just watched, passed away on Feb. 6 in Las Vegas at the age of 83. His son Harold stated that the cause of death was vascular dementia.
Mr. Mintz, a film enthusiast, was involved in a computerized billing service for dentists in 1978 when he and his wife watched “The Cheap Detective” at a theater in Los Angeles and were disappointed by it despite positive reviews from critics.
This disappointment led him to the idea of gathering opinions from actual moviegoers. This idea eventually resulted in the creation of CinemaScore, which has been collecting movie grades since 1979.
