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“The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

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Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#131

Post by TeMPOraL »

tialaramex wrote: post #73
myhf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may not be a correlation, but you can clearly see that the bottom-right quadrant of the plot is basically empty, which is an important insight. A more accurate aphorism would be "You can sell good kebabs anywhere, but you can only sell bad kebabs near a train station." And if you look at the "minimum viable quality" instead of the overall quality, there does seem to be a linear correlation with the distance. Yo…

> but you can clearly see that the bottom-right quadrant of the plot is basically empty, which is an important insight. I don't think so? It's mostly a result of the fact that (obviously) the best place to sell food is where there are people, which is also the best place to put a metro station. So on average the kebabs are pretty good and on average they're near a station. In Figure 9 one of the worst reviewed restau…

> Long after other kebab places are dark they're still doing enough business to justify remaining open.

Is that a quality signal, or just a sign they don't mind selling to people going back from parties, in various stages of being drunk? I always assumed the latter. Few restaurants (McDonald's and KFC aside) want to work those hours, so whichever does is almost guaranteed a steady trickle of customers who literally have nowhere else to eat (other than home). There isn't much pressure for quality in this situation.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#132

Post by bdangubic »

gambiting wrote: post #126
lupusreal wrote: post #33

Kebabs are like cheese steaks; the best one is whichever is closest to wherever I am.

What's a cheese steak? Just a steak but with melted cheese on top? Doesn't that ruin the steak?

it would if it was actually a steak. for the type of meat you get on cheeesteaks - trust me - you want the cheese :)

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#133

Post by cherryteastain »

imgabe wrote: post #102
btilly wrote: post #42

Many years ago I came up with a rule of thumb. Restaurants have three basic strategies, be a known quantity (chain), have a good location, or be actually good. I've found some gems by looking for the third category. Given that "near the train" is a good location, that would support this theory.

My only rule is that restaurants in hotels are usually mediocre to bad, which fits with your theory. If they have some built-in customer base they don’t have to work as hard at being good.

Does not apply to the very top end where many luxury hotels also have Michelin starred fine dining restaurants

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#134

Post by kewho »

Was confused about this part the last time I saw this posted online:

> With a mighty Pearson's correlation of 0.091, the data indicates that this could be true!

This sounds like op thinks the data supports the hypothesis.

One would assume a negative result for the hypothesis would occur when there is a bias in the upper left quadrant, where shortest distance and highest score intersect, and looking at the graphs in figures 8 and 9, to me, there appears a bias there.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#135

Post by TeMPOraL »

fermisea wrote: post #120
janalsncm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The formal terminology is “selection induced negative correlation”. If a quality score is the sum of two factors, those two factors will tend to be negatively correlated. Mathematically a trivial example is the equation 1=x+y, where 1 represents some cutoff and could be any value. Clearly x and y are inversely correlated.

Also a type of collider bias in causal inference, which generates all sorts of Simpsons paradoxes

Are we still using real terminology?

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#136

Post by ghaff »

cherryteastain wrote: post #133
imgabe wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only rule is that restaurants in hotels are usually mediocre to bad, which fits with your theory. If they have some built-in customer base they don’t have to work as hard at being good.

Does not apply to the very top end where many luxury hotels also have Michelin starred fine dining restaurants

Yeah. A random mid-range Marriott probably has an utterly boring hotel restaurant serving fairly mid-range mostly boring fare. You get up to the high-end and you're much more likely to get restaurants that don't really seem like hotel restaurants at all.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#137

Post by hackingonempty »

98codes wrote: post #93
btilly wrote: post #42

Many years ago I came up with a rule of thumb. Restaurants have three basic strategies, be a known quantity (chain), have a good location, or be actually good. I've found some gems by looking for the third category. Given that "near the train" is a good location, that would support this theory.

This supports the inverse square rule for seafood restaurant quality vs. being near the ocean. There are good places, but right on the water? Universally bad.

El Bulli was considered the best restaurant in the world until it voluntarily closed and it is right on the Mediterranean with a dock. The web site even had directions to reach it by boat.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#138

Post by awad »

gambiting wrote: post #126
lupusreal wrote: post #33

Kebabs are like cheese steaks; the best one is whichever is closest to wherever I am.

What's a cheese steak? Just a steak but with melted cheese on top? Doesn't that ruin the steak?

The steak is sliced very thin and cooked (often with cheese incorporated), so think of it as more of a beef sandwich than a steak on bread.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#139

Post by jorvi »

rsynnott wrote: post #116
seanthemon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My rule of thumb: if it has the name of the country, i expect the food to be at best sub-par i.e "Great Indian" (gave me wild food poisoning). Second rule of thumb: if the milkshakes are good, the food will be good - almost never fails me.

There’s a bizarrely good place in Dublin called China Sichuan (double whammy; country _and_ region), located in, basically, a business park 20 minutes from the city centre in a tram. It has no business being any good; combo of name and suburban location should condemn it to mediocrity at absolute best. (They’ve also clearly spent a lot on the decor, which, again, is normally not a great sign in a restaurant. And yet…

> (double whammy; country _and_ region)

This is actually good. Its a very basic rule of thumb for selecting wine: the more regionally specific they get on the label, the more likely the wine is good.

For example, if you see "California" or "Chile" on a My pet theory is that this is because the more specific the label gets, the more direct the reputation hit for a bad product.

For France and Italy, wine regions and sub-regions often have protective status. This makes a wine more expensive vs. a non-protected wine of comparative quality, but the upshot is that if you see a wine under a protective label, you can be sure of a certain baseline of quality.

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