well, if this is your idea of "hot" property, you definitely should rethink your "most popular" section. As two of those differ only in 'set average' not present in "most popular". (or the other way around, rethink hot property)
This is why you have all new extensions listed as most popular (which is really a bogus information) and they are marked as hot as well (which is more true then most popular).
In my opinion "hot" extension should be a recent high interest in extension (short term).
On other hand "most popular" should be a long term interest in extension.
If you read the other thread
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,147364.0.html I listed there some links to consider (May be these two threads could be combined).
When TOP "most popular" extension has ONLY 2.5 stars, 16 votes and 5 reviews I would hardly consider it popular, definitely not most popular and definitely definitely not top most popular.