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Well, if you're talking about a 4.4 restaurant, they are probably meaningless. There's probably a couple of TRUE negative reviews in there.

If the restaurant is a 3.1, then yeah, try to find a different place - there IS hair in the food, the cockroaches are real and the waitress DID stick the hotdog up the you know what.

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Do you not find the dispersion of ratings more interesting than the averages? Within most sites that promote ratings there is often a standard-ish dispersion, and an outlier is of far greater concern to me than the average. A solid 3 for a budget restaurant is of far lower concern than a bathtub distribution, which suggests your visit is a crapshoot.

I'm talking about actually reading the reviews, not looking at the average.

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