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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 st

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!

SamBam 2y ago
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.
- emaro 2y ago
  At the end of article it's shown that only considering train stations didn't really change the result.
- HanayamaTriplet 2y ago
  The original data includes "train and metro stations", but figure 9 filtered the data to only include train stations and arrived at the same conclusion.
- nicolas_t 2y ago
  That saying in France is usually understood to be for cities outside of Paris and only referring to "Gares" (that word is used for train stations, not for subway stations). Anecdotally, I'd say it holds true in general in most cities I've visited (with Paris being an exception)
myhf 2y ago
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.
- robocat 2y ago
  > "You can sell good kebabs anywhere, but you can only sell bad kebabs near a train station." Insightful! 97.38% of bad studies measure the wrong variable. Do drunk french people buy kebabs? In my city one central late night kebab place has great kebabs. Anecdotally I remember one great kebab cart serving at least one drunken customer in Nice (France) - not near a station and a long way from the Paris metro! I think there's some population selection flaws. Drunk people don't leave reviews. In foreign countries it is difficult to know the correct search term. I suggest an alternative study: how much lager does it need to make a train station kebab taste great?
  - stevage 2y ago
    >Do drunk french people buy kebabs? Yes, very much. Source: lived in France for two years. Bought a lot of kebabs. Drank with French people a lot. Also, I really miss French kebabs. They use the thick pide bread, and harissa sauce is always available. Also, if you order an "American" one, they put fries in it.
- tialaramex 2y ago
  > 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 restaurants is over 3km from a metro. You're likely seeing a pattern where there isn't one, which is normal for humans. There's one obvious place to go around here for a good kebab, it's a few minutes walk to the station, but the way you can tell it's the best place for a kebab is how late it's open every night. Long after other kebab places are dark they're still doing enough business to justify remaining open. The best place for pizza in my city is very close to a train station but that's a total accident, they park (it's a van, no really, best pizza in the city but they hated owning a restaurant so they put their oven in a van instead) in the car park of a railway station's pub about five minutes walk from me.
wjholden 2y ago
Pedantic nitpick: he didn't find a linear correlation. Let x=[-5..+5] and y=[25,16,9,4,1,0,1,4,9,16,25] (that is, x²). The Pearson correlation coefficient, R², will be zero. We know that y is dependent on x, but isn't linearly dependent.

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!

SamBam 2y ago

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.

emaro 2y ago
At the end of article it's shown that only considering train stations didn't really change the result.
HanayamaTriplet 2y ago
The original data includes "train and metro stations", but figure 9 filtered the data to only include train stations and arrived at the same conclusion.
nicolas_t 2y ago
That saying in France is usually understood to be for cities outside of Paris and only referring to "Gares" (that word is used for train stations, not for subway stations). Anecdotally, I'd say it holds true in general in most cities I've visited (with Paris being an exception)

myhf 2y ago

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.

robocat 2y ago
> "You can sell good kebabs anywhere, but you can only sell bad kebabs near a train station." Insightful! 97.38% of bad studies measure the wrong variable. Do drunk french people buy kebabs? In my city one central late night kebab place has great kebabs. Anecdotally I remember one great kebab cart serving at least one drunken customer in Nice (France) - not near a station and a long way from the Paris metro! I think there's some population selection flaws. Drunk people don't leave reviews. In foreign countries it is difficult to know the correct search term. I suggest an alternative study: how much lager does it need to make a train station kebab taste great?
- stevage 2y ago
  >Do drunk french people buy kebabs? Yes, very much. Source: lived in France for two years. Bought a lot of kebabs. Drank with French people a lot. Also, I really miss French kebabs. They use the thick pide bread, and harissa sauce is always available. Also, if you order an "American" one, they put fries in it.
tialaramex 2y ago
> 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 restaurants is over 3km from a metro. You're likely seeing a pattern where there isn't one, which is normal for humans. There's one obvious place to go around here for a good kebab, it's a few minutes walk to the station, but the way you can tell it's the best place for a kebab is how late it's open every night. Long after other kebab places are dark they're still doing enough business to justify remaining open. The best place for pizza in my city is very close to a train station but that's a total accident, they park (it's a van, no really, best pizza in the city but they hated owning a restaurant so they put their oven in a van instead) in the car park of a railway station's pub about five minutes walk from me.

wjholden 2y ago

Pedantic nitpick: he didn't find a linear correlation. Let x=[-5..+5] and y=[25,16,9,4,1,0,1,4,9,16,25] (that is, x²). The Pearson correlation coefficient, R², will be zero. We know that y is dependent on x, but isn't linearly dependent.