IENS – a Dutch restaurant guide

Whoever wants to go eating and doesn’t know where to go looks up a restaurant guide. The web makes it possible to do this searches on one’s computer. Two examples in Germany are the online guide by the Guide Michelin and the Gault Millau. But the flip side is that they contain just a selected number of locations.

In the Netherlands they’ve got with IENS an online restaurant guide which is compiled by the opinions and judgements of visitors of the restaurants. So an index of 17.000 restaurants came into being, about which over 70.000 visitors gave their judgements. Visitors can participate at the review process by writing short opinions or by passing a judgement via a form where they can give scores for meals, service and decor. On the website you have a locator, where you can find via the place, the cuisine and some further criteria – such as accessibility or a terrace – the appropriate restaurant. Because of the broad range you can browse both top restaurants and more basic restaurants such as fast food restaurants, ice cream parlors, juice bars or pancake houses. You can order the search results by the street, the place or the score for the meals.

The in IENS compiled reviews are also published in books. For each restaurant which is mentioned in the books there are data and a short description derived from the visitor’s notes.

The broad range of mentioned restaurants leads sometimes to surprising results. The Beluga in Maastricht, one of the top restaurants in the Netherlands, had once the following scores:

• Meals: 9.0
• Service: 8.6
• Decor: 9.0

The ice cream parlor Lisone in Heerlen had at the same time these scores:

• Meals: 9.0
• Service: 8.0
• Decor: 7.0

Thus the meals in the top restaurant and in the ice cream parlor had equal scores. This makes clear that these scores should be looked upon while taking account of the cuisine and the services for the particular consumers. In a similar situation the American movie reviewer Roger Ebert pointed out that, when you’re asking a friend if the movie Hellboy is any good, you’re not asking if it is any good compared to Mystic River, but if it is any good compared to The Punisher. For our example this means: When you want to have an excellent diner in South Limburg, you can consider the Beluga. When you want to have an ice and are near Heerlen, you can visit the Lisone. Barring the fact that you can learn more about the top restaurants elsewhere, the reviews in IENS are a good opportunity to get an idea about a particular restaurant.

Cafés, pubs and bars in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands cafés (including pubs and bars) are a popular hangout. They are called the “society´s living room” and are characterised by atmosphere and sociability. The typical example is the “bruin café” (brown café). The brownness in these cafés has been achieved by year-long smoking (in these days the preferred agent is paint). Cafés are especially common in the southern provinces of North Brabant and Limburg, but elsewhere in the country are many places to walk in.

When you want to have a reference in this broad range, you can look up the Café Top 100. Misset Horeca, a trade journal for the hotel and restaurant business, startet in 1994 with a competition to point customers and tradesmen to good cafés. For this purpose from a list of 40-50 suggestions 10 cafés has been nominated. Among the finalists the Café of the Year has been elected. From 2003 on a ranking of the 100 best Dutch cafés is published. The title “Café van het Jaar” (Café of the Year) goes to the first café on that list. The results are determined by a jury which judges the cafés according to the following factors:

• hospitality
• atmophere and appeal
• hygiene
• treatment of products
• operator / barkeeper

The current list of the 100 best cafés can be looked up here. To refine the search, you also can look up a particular province. Added to these are the cafés worth mentioning, which didn´t quite made it into the Top 100. A café, which has received the award “Café of the Year”, is kept for at least three years in the Honorary Gallery and doesn´t take part in the ranking. For each café mentioned you can look up further data.

This website should be a good starting point for the aspiring visitor of Dutch cafés, where different cafés are mentioned. The judgement are certainly subjective, but you can check these on a visit, with the chance of making new discoveries. Furthermore, there are more than 10.000 cafés, pubs and bars in the Netherlands.

Holland from the top

When you want to get a proverbial overview over the Netherlands, books with pictures by Karel Tomeï are strongly recommended. Current examples are “Over Holland” and “De Bovenkant van Nederland” (Holland from the Top) 1-3. The strength of the photos lies in their composition, which are leading to beautiful and often surprising views. Some examples of this can be admired on the photographer´s website, where you can find pictures from other countries too.

Requirements for a statistician

Question: When somebody wants to follow a carreer as a statistician, according to which criteria it should be decided at the school or the university whether he or she is allowed to complete the required education?

Should somebody answer with “gymnastics” or “economic policy”, he or she must be a member of the ministery of education or the administration of the university. Sounds strange, but is a conclusion out of my experiences:

As a pupil I´ve not been particularly great at sports. With sports I means that what goes under the moniker “physical education”. Especially with gymnastics I could not get along at all. This grew so bad that I´ve been at the risk to flunk a class. There has been a loophole, but hasn´t it existed, I would have not passed the Abitur which had qualified me for university admission.

At the university I first choose economics as my minor field of study because I wanted to apply my statistical knowledge in the fields of economics. At the University of Dortmund to the basic study of economics belonged the subjects microeconomics, macroeconomics and economic policy. To pass the intermedia diploma, you had to write an examen in each subject and pass it. The failure rates were as follows:

• Microeconomics: ca. 1 out of 3,
• macroeconomics: ca. 1 out of 3,
• economic policy: ca. 2 out of 3.

Considering that you have to pass each of the examens, at most one third of the participants had the chance to pass to the main study. When you assume that the performances in the examens are independent from each other, would that mean that only about 15 percent of the students would pass. To make the matter worse, after the third failure would have meant the end of the study. This would have not only applied to the minor field of study but the whole study. By the way, I´ve passed each examen in statistics so far. In economics the situation was that I´ve passed micro- en macroeconomics and flunked twice in economic policy. I had the choice to change my minor field of study or tried the third time an examen in which I had no sigle clue how to pass it. It remains to mention that I´m no fan of Russian roulette.

As a counclusion there remains the question whether somebody who wants (is required) to get knowledge about a certain subject, is to be judged only for the potential for knowing and applying the stuff, so that he or she can put his or her main efforts into learning that subject. In both situations it definitely has not been possible.

No New Europe in Germany

At the end of the year 2007 I was looking around in the Selexyz bookstore of Maastricht, I saw “Het nieuwe Europa”, the Dutch translation of “New Europe”, the new book by Michael Palin, in which he wrote wrote about his trip in Eastern Europe. To many people Michael Palin is know as member of the comedy group Monty Python. Since the end of the 80s he´s presenting at the BBC a series of travel documentaries, which were each followed by a book. His documentaries are so popular that they lead to a increase in the presented destinations.

After I´ve seen the Dutch translation, I went to Amazon.de and looked for the German translation. It turned out that there wasn´t any. Which meant that not only there wasn´t any just then but there wasn´t any publishing date, so that you might have preordered it. I didn´t understand that because of the following reasons:

• As mentioned, Michael Palin is one of the top travel writers.
• Eastern Europe is a region with a long historical relation to Germany and Austria. A book which lets one know about the countries across the just fallen Iron Curtain should have found its readers (especially when the former German Democratic Republic is mentioned too).
• In Germany and Austria there are about 90 million people which make for a accordingly big potential readership.

Remains the question why there was a Dutch translation of such a book but no German one.

But the curious ones who could speak English, didn´t need to be sad. Besides ordering the original edition they could read the book on Michael Palin´s official website.

[UPDATE: The situation, about which I´ve written in the original post, has changed at last. A German edition with the titel "Europareise" is going to be published in March 2009.]

German railways respect Dutch tradition

The city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch is the capital of the Dutch province of North Brabant. It has of one of the oldest and most completely preserved medieval inner cities in the Netherlands. Just one sight which has to be mentioned is the Saint John’s Cathedral. In the city there are many opportunities for shopping for a drink or a meal. The surroundings are worth a visit too, and generally the city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch is one of the important centres in the Netherlands.

‘s-Hertogenbosch is colloquially also known as Hertogenbosch or Den Bosch. The official place name has been established by law in 1996. To advocate the traditional name, in 1993 a society has been founded in 1993. It takes care that in maps, telephone books or sign posts are using the correct name. A similar case is the city of ‘s-Gravenhage, which is internationally known as Den Haag, The Hague, La Haye or under other names. For this reason the city itself uses the abbreviated name Den Haag.

The interesting thing about this story is that the Deutsche Bahn (the German railways) does respect this tradition. At least it does that in their ticket machines. When you want to buy a ticket or try to look up a connection, you have to enter a starting station and a destination station. When you´re disrespecting the tradition and try to enter “Den Bosch” or “Hertogenbosch”, the ticket machine ends up completely clueless. But when you try an “S”, among the suggestions shows up a button that reads “s Hertogenbosch”.

The answer to this riddle is that the place names just could be looked up by entering the first letters. You just can achieve something with the part of a place name when this part is just at the beginning. By the way, you can look up The Hague via “Den Haag”, but not via “s Gravenhage”. The Deutsche Bahn is following the Dutch usage here too. There remains just the question what a customer is supposed to do when he doesn´t know the official name of the city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch…

World goalkeeper of the Year – By what method?

In connection with numbers and information of all sorts you have, W. Edwards Deming has pointed to the question how these informations did come together. His quote on this topic was “By what method?”. The reason is that the method for gathering information influences in high degree the results. When you don´t consider this circumstance it can happen that for the solution of a problem not every fact is taken into account. One example is the punishment of a class because of the misconducts of some pupils. The error in reasoning lies in infering from the conduct of the few the conduct of every pupil. Everyone to e affected should be taken accout of to prevent that punishment are not aimed against prosocial people.

The reason for these remarks lies in a post by Oliver Fritsch in his soccer blog direkter-freistoss.de. In this post he wrote about the report that the German Markus Merk has received the award “World referee of the year” (as in 2004 and 2005). This award is presents by the IFFHS (International Federation of Football History & Statistics). The IFFHS also presents the award “World goalkeeper of the year”, which is won three times by Oliver Kahn. Seperate from the reports about the actual presentations in the news, in news reports about Merk or Kahn these awards are often mentioned. They must be important facts thus.

The problem is that it is not exactly clear how those awards are presented. The website of the IFFHS says that sports desks and experts form 89 countries over each continent take place at the votings. More is not known. The publicist Erik Eggers tried in vain to find out more about the IFFHS and suggested that it could be just an one-man business. The best is you take a look at the website and make your conclusions.

Finally I have to mention that the post by Oliver Fritsch is titled with “Das Statistikkabinett des Dr. Pöge” (“The Statistics Cabinet of Dr. Pöge” – Pöge is the founder and president IFFHS, thus the one man in the suspected one-man business) and the article by Erik Eggers is titled with “Statistisches Phänomen” (“Statistical Phenomenon”). The reason could be that the title of the federation contains the term “statistics”. The problem is that statistics is often only regarded as a compilation of numbers, which could be oe of the reasons that statistics is regarded a kind of lying. While this stereotype may have a reason, we should not stay there. A respectable statistical report can be checked in terms of its data and the methods applied. Once you know how the statistic came into being you come to the point where you have to decide whether the numbers do lead you to the abandonment of your previous knowledge. Or regarding the awards of the IFFHS:

• How were the rankings – which decide about the awards – made up?
• What can you conclude from the rankings resp. the awards?

Crime in the Netherlands

As in Germany crime has become a more and more discussed topic in the Netherlands. This doesn´t have to coincide with actually occuring crimes, but with the impression which is fed by spectacular cases and common nuisances. However, the question about which they talk there too is how to get to more safety.

To the discussion about crime belongs the question where crime takes place most often and where it is safe. The Dutch daily newspaper Algemeen Dagblad publishes with his Misdaadmeter an overview about crime in the Netherlands. It is possible to look up the number of occurences of crimes for a given town, village or borough. To get the (un-)safety of a municipality the newspaper calculates each year a misdaadscore and publishes a ranking. The position of a municipality in this ranking provides of course often an issue for discussion. The Misdaadscore is calculated as follows:

From the official police reports the position of each municipality is calculated for 12 offences, based on their relative frequencies compared to the population. Six offences are weighed twice:

• car theft
• threatening
• assault and battery
• holdup
• street robbery
• burglary of houses

The remaining six are weighed once:

• car breaking
• theft from a box, a carport, a barn or a summer house
• moped theft
• fraud
• car vandalism
• pickpocketing

The sum of the positions makes up the misdaadscore. Municipalities with a population of less than 4.000 are left out of the calculation (in 2006 these have been Ameland, Schiermonnikoog, Vlieland, Rozendaal and Thorn). The resulting ranking consisted thus of 450 municipalities.

From the ranking you can get some interesting insights:

• In the year 2006 the city of Eindhoven has been the most insecure municipality of the Netherlands. It displaced Rotterdam, which lead the ranking in the previous years.
• Amsterdam is not on the podium. Although the former minister of Immigration and Integration Rita Verdonk maintained that the city is turning into a banana republic, it is only on the 9th place (after being 6th in the previous year).
• When you have to name a particularly criminal Dutch city, many people would mention Amsterdam or Rotterdam. But the Dutch secret capital of crime is Roermond! The old bishop´s town climbed from 8th place in 2004 to 4th in 2005 and is now on position 3. When you consider that the actual town of Roermond has a population of only 34.000 inhabitants, is this a remarkable achievement – with a decidedly upward trend!
• The municipality of Zeist near Utrecht experienced in 2006 a setback. After the location of the Royal Netherlands Football Association has improved itself from the 21th place to 52th last year (having been less criminal thus), it found itself at the 37th place in 2006.
• The most safe municipality in 2006 has been Littenseradiel in the northern province of Friesland. It serves thus as a role model for every other village and town in the Netherlands.

From the Misdaadmeter you can derive much. The question is how to interpret it:

• Is the high position of Roermond just because of the incompetence of those who are responsible for fighting crime, or can you say that in a place like Roermond you may expect much crime?
• Do the positions of Zeist show a setback, or could that have happened just by chance?
• Before 2006 only offenses were only reported when charges were pressed. From 2006 on offenses are reported whenever they´re noticed by the police, even when nobody is pressing charges. Thus you can´t easily compare the number of offenses from year to year for a given municipality.
• Some offenses occur so seldom that these don´t take place in many municipalities during a year. The question is how you can rank them (at the Misdaadmeter they use the highest position for each of the municipalities).

Finally you have to take into account that ranking generally do have a first and a last place. About the total number of crimes nothing is being told (it went back in 2006). It would be interesting how the results in Germany (or in other countries) would look like if they were compared in a similar manner.

Hello world!

This is the first post for the English versio of mij German blog. After I´ve reached some readers with that blog and the Dutch version, I´m curious how many will be interested in my post when they´re written in a language half of the earth understands. The best is, I´ll tell something about me and about what I´m going to write.

I was born in Bad Pyrmont, grew up in Cuxhaven, studied statistics in Dortmund and ended up living in Aachen. But I have not worked in Aachen but in Montzen, Heerlen, Baesweiler and in Heerlen again. With exception of Montzen these places could be much of less easily reached by public transport, so that I actually lived right between my various places of work. At present I´m unemployed and looking for a job for which I don´t have too little working experience, too little skills or too much skills. This is easier said than done, and I think it should not be that difficult.

As mentioned I studied statistics at the University of Dortmund and received a diploma (a master degree). Statistics have attracted me because of the practical benefits. Out of a indefinable cloud of data you can get valuable insight. Thus I´m especially interested in fields such as time series analysis or graphical representations. In the course of my study it turned out that statistics not only consists of skills and methods, but requires statistical thinking too. This means that you only should see results and trends only where there are any.

A special inspiration for me are the teachings of W. Edwards Deming. The fact that he´s connected with the rise of Japan to an economic superpower after World War II should be impressive enough. Deming´s merit has been that he made clear to the companies that more quality can mean less losses instead of more costs. For this goal he didn´t made up a system as Six Sigma but a building of thoughts which forms a basis for all decisions. On this building he literally worked until his death. In the long term everybody will win instead of just one at the expense of another. This is reflected in his rhetorical question whether any country need to be poor.

Deming still enjoys enormous popularity in Japan. From ca. 1980 on his teachings has been rediscovered in his native country USA. His books has been translated into various languages such as Dutch, Serbo-Croatian and Russian. A German translation did not take place. The teachings of Deming are not much widespread too in German-speaking Europe. I have the impression that this has not only scientific reasons, which I should describe in upcoming posts. In the meantime I recommend a visit to the Swiss Deming Institute.

How big the demand for right interpretation of the facts us, can you see at the example of political discussions and decisions, which are lead by headlines chosen and wirtten by the yellow press according to their public impact.

Since my work in Heerlen I´m dealing with the Netherlands. I can´t exactly tell the reason, but I´ve got the impression that it is an absolutely interesting country. Maybe my future post can lead to an interpretation. Besides the Netherlands I´ve been several times in Belgium, thus I´m going to write about that country too.

An additional field of interest is photography. By using digital photography you can not only make more pictures but you can see at once when they´ve gone wrong. An additional advantages lies in the possibilities of digital imaging.

That should be enough for now. As the title says, statistical subjects and the Benelux countries will be an important part of this blog. The “more” in the title suggests that I´m going to write about other subjects too in which I´m interested (and maybe 14 readers too). Whoever likes to comment on the subjects is welcome.