[HN Gopher] "The closer to the train station, the worse the keba...
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"The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab" - A "Study"
Author : TeMPOraL
Score : 62 points
Date : 2025-02-24 21:25 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jmspae.se)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jmspae.se)
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| 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.
| thwarted wrote:
| Sometimes in another office building's lobby.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| The coffee from the machine _in_ the office is even worse.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Visit us. You'll be surprised. :D
| dylan604 wrote:
| Now find the correlation to the quality of coffee to how
| recent the latest funding round was.
| bayindirh wrote:
| We buy our own coffee and equipment. The quality is
| constant. The only variable is our mood, which might
| affect the measurement from jug to jug, resulting in
| slight taste variations.
| nkrisc wrote:
| 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.
| macrael wrote:
| OP found no correlation between railway proximity and quality
| calmbonsai wrote:
| This makes intuitive sense.
|
| High mass-transit corridor real-estate (rail, air, road) leases
| come at a premium so those higher fixed-costs and must be
| balanced against a higher-volume of less-breadth of service with
| the same fixed (or even slightly higher) labor costs.
|
| In food service, high-volume is (mostly) inversely correlated
| with quality.
| macrael wrote:
| OP found no correlation
| dietr1ch wrote:
| Reviews probably have too much noise. It's not only the food
| that gets rated and people taking the time to rate a place
| might be doing so because of a particularly good or bad
| experience they just had. It's not really a day to day thing.
| serial_dev wrote:
| Reviews have a lot of noise, but it feels like it's still
| the best source, unless anyone can recommend a better
| alternative.
|
| Reviews are the worse way to test this hypothesis except
| all the others.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Not true -- restaurant reviews have a lot of signal.
| Generally an average score is quite reliable once you hit
| 100 or so reviews. Even 50 reviews is a pretty decent
| signal.
| jdiez17 wrote:
| Looking at their actual results (https://preview.redd.it/znmnejga
| b5je1.png?width=1000&format=...), I don't see any positive or
| negative correlation. Although I can subjectively confirm the
| hypothesis.
| bitwize wrote:
| 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, QLD is alien by comparison and I think they
| consider "pepperoni" and "salami" interchangeable down there.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| While the work provides some additional data, it does little
| more than re-propose an already-common hypothesis -- that pizza
| which is closer in distance is also closer in flavor. The
| author is searching for the minimum publishable unit, and
| misses even that mark. I advise against publishing.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| > I think they consider "pepperoni" and "salami"
|
| Mate, spicy snags are spicy snags
|
| Edit: Used the actual aussie word for sausages...
| crazygringo wrote:
| To be fair, pepperoni is literally just spicy salami. Salami
| with hot peppers added. Hence the "pepper" in the name.
| triceratops wrote:
| > Hence the "pepper" in the name.
|
| Pepperomi doesn't quite have the same ring to it
| janwillemb wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| At the end of article it's shown that only considering train
| stations didn't really change the result.
| HanayamaTriplet wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > "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?
| myheartisinohio wrote:
| The only place this isn't true is Japan.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Thinking about Turkey, that might not hold true either. Some of
| the best shops are both small and very close to mass transit in
| where I live.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I mean, it's not true in general if you actually read the
| article.
|
| > Whilst there are some minor indications that the hypothesis
| could be correct (eg. many of the absolute worst restaurants
| being some of the closest) the correlation is simply too weak.
| drchickensalad wrote:
| Honestly NYC has a lot of its best restaurants by train
| stations, throughout every borough.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| Always like reading the Best Kebab reviews on trip advisor. It's
| right next to Queen Street railway station so fits with the
| study.
|
| https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g186534-d125...
|
| > Not only was my food uncooked but I also discovered a pubic
| hair in my chips and cheese, then when I proceeded to report the
| problem, I was chased with a knife. Down Dundas Street.Absolutely
| scandalous
| Boogie_Man wrote:
| For context: "Knifey Chaseies" is an historic pastime in
| Glasgow where this shop is located. An immigrant flare to a
| local tradition!
| Glawen wrote:
| Haa so many memories passing this kebab at the end of the
| night. I confirm it is the worst I ever tasted, but chips were
| Ok
| macrael wrote:
| LOL we may need to update the title of this post, half the top
| level comments right now are assuming the study confirmed the
| hypothesis.
|
| > With a mighty Pearson's correlation of 0.091, the data
| indicates that this could
|
| > be true! If you ignore the fact that the correlation is so weak
| that calling it 'statistically
|
| > insignificant' would be quite generous.
| lostdog wrote:
| The more generally interesting a topic is the more likely a HN
| user is to read the article. A study.
| tialaramex wrote:
| I am definitely guilty of sometimes clicking "reply" and
| _then_ reading the linked article to check that I 'm not
| about to essentially tell you what you'd have read or worse,
| tell you something the article actually debunks.
| gnabgib wrote:
| Ongoing discussion (due to the SCP) (58 points, 7 hours/4 days
| ago, 17 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43123810
| woodruffw wrote:
| 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 doner I've had
| in my life was in large/intercity train terminals.
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| woodruffw wrote:
| 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!
| lupusreal wrote:
| Kebabs are like cheese steaks; the best one is whichever is
| closest to wherever I am.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I got sick off of train station sushi in Sydney. Never again
| billfor wrote:
| Well you would be fine in Japan.
| mxfh wrote:
| 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 Doner there
| was always above par.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Not just commuters but tourists, people you can scam once and
| who will never be back.
|
| When your falafelshop is in the neighborhood you can't be
| scamming people because you'll quickly become abandoned.
| macrael wrote:
| OP found no correlation between railway proximity and quality
| decimalenough wrote:
| Doner in Berlin is like ramen in Tokyo: the competition is so
| furious that objectively bad places go out of business quickly.
| btilly wrote:
| 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.
| robocat wrote:
| Where does crappy restaurant fit into your taxonomy?
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| its either mcdonalds (well known) or close to work (good
| location). i still eat at crappy restaurants if they have 1
| good item.
|
| we used to go a chinese place and we called it "spicy
| chicken." everything else on the menu was trash
| golergka wrote:
| Good location or bankrupt. Just look at all the tourist trap
| restoraunts.
| Scrapemist wrote:
| Have a good location
| asah wrote:
| They are not mutually exclusive. Counter examples:
|
| - Katz's deli in NYC is incredibly famous, in a great location,
| and actually has kickass pastrami. The trade-off are relatively
| high prices and lines down the block
|
| - restaurants with exclusive relationships.
|
| - restaurants that make money another way, e.g. gambling.
|
| - family owned restaurants with legacy rent deals.
|
| - restaurants that cater to niche audiences e.g. small
| ethnicities and religions
|
| (And others, probably)
| porphyra wrote:
| Probably one of the most famous examples is Jiro sushi which
| is in a subway station.
| macrael wrote:
| OP found no correlation between railway proximity and quality
| glitchc wrote:
| The notable exception perhaps is Kings Cross Station in London.
| Food is generally excellent.
| legitster wrote:
| This immediately reminds me of Tyler Cowen's book "An Economist
| Gets Lunch". He infers all sort of rules for profiling restaurant
| quality.
|
| In fact, he makes this very observation - high foot traffic areas
| command higher rents, and it's harder to provide both good
| quality and good value where rents are high. But restaurants that
| can be successful without good real estate are a green flag.
| macrael wrote:
| OP found no correlation between railway proximity and quality
| ggambetta wrote:
| In a similar vein, in Venice I developed this theory that you
| could estimate your distance to San Marco by the price of a slice
| of pizza (more expensive meaning closer). Never tested it, but
| would be fun to see a heatmap.
| joshka wrote:
| A stronger hypothesis to test might be the statement: "the
| closest kebab to the station is worse than the next farther one",
| which would be the intuitive implied meaning of the original
| statement (even though it's not a perfectly accurate
| interpretation).
| mdahardy wrote:
| Seems like a lot of this could be explained by better food
| tending to be served in locations with lower commercial real
| estate prices (I believe Tyler Cowen has written about this).
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