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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”

#31

Post by SamBam »

janwillemb wrote: post #9

He didn't find a correlation, or rather found that there is no correlation, between proximity to a railway station and how the kebab is reviewed. It's a nice study for a statistics class!

As far as I can tell, his study is looking for a correlation with the distance to Metro stations.

This is a big difference. There are hundreds of Metro stations in Paris. Everywhere is close to one.

I think the original intent was distance to a train station. If Paris is anything like Rome, close to the railway station is cheap hostels and recent immigrants accommodations.

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

#32

Post by woodruffw »

Running the analysis while adjusting for station size/passenger volume would be interesting: Paris's transit network is very dense and remarkably uniform, so you'd expect a somewhat uniform distribution of quality around train station entrances/exits as a whole. Meanwhile, anecdotally, some of the worst döner I've had in my life was in large/intercity train terminals.

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

#34

Post by triceratops »

crazygringo wrote: post #30
bitwize wrote: post #7

I've observed the following: 1) An alarming number of regions in the world have a pizza joint called "New York Pizza", "Manhattan Pizza", or similar. 2) The similarity of the pizza therein to the actual thin, greasy slices served up in pizza joints from actual New York is inversely proportional to the location's distance from New York. So, the New York Pizza in Boston -- pretty close. The New York Pizza in Brisbane,…

To be fair, pepperoni is literally just spicy salami. Salami with hot peppers added. Hence the "pepper" in the name.

> Hence the "pepper" in the name.

Pepperomi doesn't quite have the same ring to it

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

#35

Post by nkrisc »

madcaptenor wrote: post #4
bigfatkitten wrote: post #2

Anecdotally, it's the same for coffee. Office lobby coffee shops are invariably terrible. The decent ones are always at least a 5-10 minute walk away.

The coffee from the machine in the office is even worse.

The last office I worked in not only had terrible coffee, but the machine had a touch screen and required network connectivity and regularly crashed, prohibiting all dispensation of coffee. It also reportedly came with a 5 figure monthly operating cost.

The coffee in the lobby was only slightly better, but at least the baristas didn’t crash during their OTA updates.

A 10 minute walk away and you’d find the best coffee for at least a couple miles around.

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

#36

Post by bombcar »

woodruffw wrote: post #32

Running the analysis while adjusting for station size/passenger volume would be interesting: Paris's transit network is very dense and remarkably uniform, so you'd expect a somewhat uniform distribution of quality around train station entrances/exits as a whole. Meanwhile, anecdotally, some of the worst döner I've had in my life was in large/intercity train terminals.

My expectation would be it's the passenger type - if 80% of the people pass through the station never to return, you're going to get quite a different setup than if 80% are daily commuters.

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

#38

Post by myhf »

janwillemb wrote: post #9

He didn't find a correlation, or rather found that there is no correlation, between proximity to a railway station and how the kebab is reviewed. It's a nice study for a statistics class!

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. You can use a 5% quantile regressor to easily find the lower edge of the distribution.

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

#39

Post by woodruffw »

bombcar wrote: post #36
woodruffw wrote: post #32

Running the analysis while adjusting for station size/passenger volume would be interesting: Paris's transit network is very dense and remarkably uniform, so you'd expect a somewhat uniform distribution of quality around train station entrances/exits as a whole. Meanwhile, anecdotally, some of the worst döner I've had in my life was in large/intercity train terminals.

My expectation would be it's the passenger type - if 80% of the people pass through the station never to return, you're going to get quite a different setup than if 80% are daily commuters.

Yeah, good phrasing -- I was treating volume as a proxy for visiting passengers vs. regulars, but that's not correct in all cases.

Or intuitively: who doesn't lower their standards when they buy a meal at an airport or major train terminal? We all do!

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

#40

Post by mxfh »

Duh, commuters are just less picky with their food choices, reliably fast service trumps food quality here for obvious reasons. Tourists as mentioned in the article are not that many.

Anecdotally the worst McDonalds Burger I had was with a cold slice of cheese at the Berlin Main Station, while the Döner there was always above par.

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