In Search of America's Best Burrito

At first I thought this was a joke. What a strange article. Just because Yelp's reviews can be analyzed like baseball statistics doesn't make it a proper treatment of the data. It's not even a good analogy; one set of numbers is a concrete measurement of a player's performance, while the other is an aggregate of people's opinions of the quality of a restaurant, not just it's burritos.

It'd be one thing if Yelp set out to gather and aggregate people's opinions of burritos, but Yelp raters consider many other aspects of the restaurant, such as wait staff and cleanliness. I see no mention in the article of the author accounting for this in the adjusted burrito ratings (even saying adjusted burrito ratings makes me feel like a tool).

"Seven years ago, I moved to Wicker Park, Chicago. The neighborhood, once heavily Hispanic, was being inundated by hipsters and yuppies..."

Seems a little off-key, given that Exile in Guyville, partly a complaint and insider takedown of the Wicker Park scene, came out in 1993. I guess we always knew Nate was a nerd.

Really glad to see that Santa Barbara made the top 20, but the restaurant that made it (Los Agaves) is definitely not the best burrito in town! Maybe top 4, but alas, my opinion is not the consensus. (For the record Los Arroyos, El Sitio, Romati-ezer along with Los Agaves make my top 4).

There is more data, thought and science in this than in many journal articles I've read.