CLAY SHIRKY HAS AN AMUSING OBSERVATION regarding restaurant reviews:

The Times coverage is unintentionally hilarious. Zagat uses cumulative anonymous ratings from diners who send in their opinions of various restaurants. The Times journalist, Florence Fabricant, goes on and on about how these ratings draw on as few as 100 people, obviously casting about for some way to explain how a 30 seat restaurant in Brooklyn could be rated above Alain Ducasse, where a bowl of soup will set you back almost forty dollars, while never noting that the alternative method of judgment — the impressions of a single restaurant reviewer — are a more limited sample.

Read it all.