Ranking US Cities By Their Pizza Restaurants -- Nothing About The Bakken -- February 9, 2018

Posted at The Bismarck Tribune. 

FindTheHome, a real estate intelligence site, set out to find the pizza capitals of America. Using Yelp's API, Yelp Fusion, the data scientists calculated an aggregate "Pizza Score" for all cities with at least 100,000 people.

They used three sub-metrics to measure pizza prevalence, inherent quality and quality compared to other types of food. Those three metrics include:

- Prevalence: The total number of pizza restaurants in a given city
- Inherent Quality: The percentage of pizza restaurants in a given city rated with four or more stars
- Quality Compared to Other foods: The average Yelp rating of pizza restaurants in a given city compared to the average rating of all restaurants in that city

FindTheHome compared the average scores of pizza restaurants to other non-pizza restaurants to ensure that the cities on the list sell pizza that stands out in comparison to other types of food — think Chinese or Mexican food. The list is ranked by the Pizza Score, with the highest score being the No. 1 pizza capital in America. When ties occur, the cities are ordered according to the average rating for pizza restaurants in that city.

 At the bottom of my spreadsheet, the things that jumped out at me.

I added a fourth column that was not in the original poll. Assuming that you were an out-of-town visitor, what are the chances, not knowing anything about the pizza restaurants in town, what are the chances that you would end up at a bad pizza restaurant (actually pretty high, ranging from 24% to 66%)? By that criteria, Philadelphia should have been ranked #1: of all the cities, an out-of-town visitor would be more likely to pick a 4-star or 5-star pizza restaurant than in any other city listed.  Chicago and NYC are ranked #1 and #2 respectively but 66% of pizza restaurants in both cites are 3-star or worse. The cities below are ranked #25 at the top to #1 at the bottom:

City	# of pizza restaurants	# of 4 - 5 star pizza restaurants	Percent chance of finding a bad pizza restaurant
Louisville/Jefferson County, KY	60	27	55%
Mesa, AZ	108	35	68%
Lexington-Fayette, KY	93	45	52%
Chattanooga, TN	38	22	42%
Charlotte NC	164	55	66%
Knoxville, TN	70	28	60%
Stockton, CA	58	25	57%
Los Angeles, CA	799	318	60%
Berkeley, CA	40	22	45%
Tucson, AZ	126	45	64%
Scottsdale, AZ	83	38	54%
Colorado Springs, CO	95	32	66%
Irvine, CA	44	19	57%
San Diego, CA	385	163	58%
Oklahoma City, OK	128	53	59%
Columbus, OH	108	62	43%
El Paso, TX	67	36	46%
Raleigh, NC	125	59	53%
Portland, OR	226	105	54%
Jacksonville, FL	192	75	61%
Seattle, WA	226	110	51%
Philadelphia, PA	87	66	24%
Phoenix, AZ	330	131	60%
NYC, NY	1795	697	61%
Chicago, IL	437	171	61%

Comments:

• Boston did not make the list! It's a bogus poll if Boston did not make the list
• not one city in New Jersey! It's a bogus poll if no city in New Jersey was on the list
• fly-over states? where are they?
• Tennessee/Kentucky over-represented? Interesting. Not expected.
• Arizona really, really over-represented: Tucson, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa