

SF Open Data Mashup: Your Favorite Restaurants Are Filthy - vagabondjack
http://reasonengine.wordpress.com
Combining Department of Public Health open data records with Yelp restaurant review scores paints a revealing picture of dining our in San Francisco.
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abalone
The part where the author picks out a subset of "unforgivable" violations is
arbitrary and unsupported. It's like "what sounds the grossest" with a bunch
of Data Science Analysis layered on top.. Because boy do we nerds love our
charts-n-graphs. But the assumptions are faulty.

Improper storage and refrigeration (not on the "unforgivable" list) are
undoubtably some of the biggest causes of food borne illness.

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abalone
I just want to take the opportunity to comment further on the hygiene thing,
because it's relevant to public health in a very unexpected way.

The author has such a fixation on hygiene that they arbitrarily elevate it to
a special category, above proper refrigeration and storage, beyond all reason
and logic. What reason and logic, you may ask? Hygiene's mainly an issue if a
food handler is _sick_ or come into contact with a sick person. Whereas
improperly stored food will get you ill a very high percentage of the time
regardless of the health of the staff. Just do a quick calculation of the odds
in your head of which is a more critical issue.

But it's super gross, right, and most people can't help but put it at the top
of their mental list of "grossness", even above unrefrigerated meat and eggs
(that have been previously refrigerated), which are far more likely to make
you sick.

So how does an irrational fixation with hygiene affect public health? There
was a study done that compared poor Russian kids with rich Finnish kids living
across the border from one another. It found higher rates of auto-immune
diseases, allergies and diabetes in the Finnish kids. Similar genetic profiles
and all that.

Long story short, the theory is the rich Finnish parents were more obsessed
with hygiene and keeping their kids clean, and it actually hurt the
development of a normal immune system.

Interesting, right? Moral of the story: mere quantity of data is insufficient
to draw correct conclusions. One must also adhere to a rigorous scientific
methodology that controls for biases.

Source: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-
Unintended-...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Unintended-
and-Deadly-Consequences-of-Living-in-the-Industrialized-World-199164051.html)

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timr
_" Data science is powerful because it maximizes leverage in the presence of
finite resources."_

Regular old "science" does that too.

~~~
seiji
Hush. Their ego is trying to feel important.

[Old Adjective] [Old Noun] = New Thing We Can Be Experts At Before Everybody
Else!

"DJ'ing is powerful because it maximizes sound combinations in the presence of
finite source material."

~~~
cmelbye
"Disc" and "data" aren't adjectives.

~~~
moocowduckquack
nouns are commonly used as adjectives

[http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/nouns-
adjective.htm](http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/nouns-adjective.htm)

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rhizome
_" Employee discharge from eyes, nose, or mouth"_

With the US's health insurance system and management habits? Makes sense.

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ondrae
This is great, thanks. How replicable is your process for other cities that
have open data?

Code for America recently worked with Yelp and several cities to standardize
restaurant inspection data so that services like Yelp (and perhaps you) can
display it nationwide.

[http://www.yelp.com/healthscores](http://www.yelp.com/healthscores)

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kevinwuhoo
It's a little disappointing that the author didn't go into more detail on
arguably the most interesting part: the modeling that they explored. It would
be really cool to query Yelp's api to gather more data to factor into the
model for each restaurant. Unfortunately, Yelp's api always seemed severely
limited to me, it's a trove of rich data that they've kept locked down. Their
api only allows you to gather 3 reviews on each business [1] and there's no
way to query for data about a user.

[1]:
[http://www.yelp.com/developers/documentation/v2/business](http://www.yelp.com/developers/documentation/v2/business)

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sliverstorm
I've noticed this trend before, and I don't even have a hypothesis to explain
it. To _me_ , clouds of flies inside the restaurant are off-putting. Yet
apparently most people either don't notice, or don't care...?

~~~
jlgreco
If the food wasn't great, then somewhere so gross wouldn't stay in business
very long.

All of my favourite places to eat or drink are hardly cleanrooms. If I were
elderly or had a weakened immune system, that would probably concern me more
than it does currently.

~~~
sliverstorm
I don't fear for my health per se, but the disgust curbs the enjoyment.

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ackfoo
I recently spent four days in hospital on IV fluids after a bad restaurant
meal. Here's what I learned.

1) Most restaurants are primarily in business to make money, not to provide
high-quality healthy food.

2) Much of the food served in restaurants is not made there. There may be a
chain of 3-4 intermediary suppliers between the raw ingredients and what you
are served.

3) Most restaurateurs don't know what is in the food; not because they don't
care but because it is impossible to monitor the supply chain.

Having nearly died as a result, I will never again trust my food to someone
whose primary motivation is financial gain. Now, if I eat it, I made it.

~~~
e2e8
This "primary motivation is financial gain" describes capitalism in general
does it not. So you could extend your distrust to all those business that
produce the raw ingredients too. You probably do not grow or raise all the
food you consume.

Also there may be financial gain in rarely making your customers ill so that
does not automatically make food businesses untrustworthy.

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callmeed
The extent I will frequent a Mexican restaurant is generally inversely
proportional to how clean it is (or at least appears).

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ams6110
Doesn't surprise me, either the problems or which restaurants are the worst.
Immigrant entrepreneurs from countries where hygiene standards are far below
what we are accustomed to in the west just don't "see" these things, or if
they do, don't consider them to be problems.

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D9u
What about the deliberate mishandling and, or, adulteration of food by
disgruntled employees?

Anyone who's seen the move "Waiting" knows what I'm talking about.

 _What happens in the kitchen ends up on the plate_

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brackin
I went a really mediocre, boring restaurant yesterday that had a score of 98.
Didn't change my mind on it.

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MrBra
Seems like, that many times, money involved in a business is directly
proportional to filth. Odd.

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weesinator35
Leopold's? Damn would not have guessed

