Lying with graphs

Someone on twitter shared this article about the size of the big 4 ad agencies. Unfortunately it’s horribly, horribly flawed.

First, the numbers they’re presenting are wrong. I copied the headline numbers that they linked to into Excel (that file, with my graphs, is: here). Their top 4 category is right. The four largest do sum to $40.7 billion. However it appears that their “next 46″ is really numbers 3-50, #3 and #4 are being double counted in both categories. From what I can tell, the real number for the next 46 is $21.5 billion. Perhaps I’m not understanding something about the way these were computed, but that’s my understanding.

Finally, that graph is a travesty to data presentation. The y-axis range (starting at 32 instead of 0) obscures the data, and the cones are stupid beyond words.

Original Ad Age graph. Note the y-axis and stupid cones.

We can easily make that graph more useful by turning it into standard bars with a y-axis that begins at 0. Note that the difference appears much smaller, and more clearly.

My first revision - fixing the y-axis and using normal bars

Finally note that that’s actually a lie, because their summary doesn’t seem to line up with their data. Here’s how it would actually look, as far as I can tell.

This is using the totals I came up with based on their report

However ultimately I think this is a poor way of expressing the data. Top 4 is, to me, not that significant. I’d rather see how that tail actually plays out. Is it the top 10 that are pretty big, and then 11-50 are microscopic? Is it really just the top 1 that’s huge, and the rest are more even? A graph that shows each company separately would help a lot. So I made each company a bar, ordered them by rank, and highlighted the top 4 in red. To me this graph tells a much richer and more useful story. You can see that WPP and Omnicom are huge. Publicis and Interpublic are pretty large, but only half the first two. Then Dentsu, Aegis, Havas, and Hakuhodo DY are pretty big, around the 2-3 billion mark. Starting with Acxiom is falls off and is pretty consistent. Acxiom is half of Hakuhodo, but every company after is at least 84% of the one before it, with most around 95% of the next highest’s revenue.

Individually graphed agency holding companies. Top 4 highlighted in red. Notice the big changes in the top 9, then pretty consistent numbers.

Again if you’re interested you can check out the Excel file I slapped these numbers/graphs together in by downloading it here.

UPDATE: Matt Carmichael at Ad Age updated his post to something very much like my third. Tufte would be pleased.

April 12th anniversaries

Apparently today is a good day to do historic stuff. The first piece of usenet/email spam was posted; the first space shuttle, Columbia, was first launched; Yuri Gagarin was the first person in space; FDR died; and the Civil War began with the battle of Fort Sumter. (and my cousin (once removed) was baptized!) Through the happenstance of fate an ancestor of mine, Dr. Lebby, was present there and wrote up an account. My dad dug it out of Google Books, they helpfully scanned and OCR’d it for us.

Reading about the anniversary, my dad looked up Nathaniel Lebby, Patriot, And Some of his Descendants by Edmund Detreville Ellis (my great grandfather) and found that there was a reference on p. 170. He typed the excerpt from his paper copy:

My parents were married in the official residence of the Quarantine Officer of the State of South Carolina and the Port of Charleston, Dr. Robert Lebby, Jr., on January 29, 1889 – my grandfather Lebby’s 58th birthday – by Rev. Josiah McL. Seabrook. The house is still standing and is occupied by a Doctor and his family!  It is only a few hundred yards from where Dr. Lebby, in his capacity as Physician, stood when “The First Shot” was fired from Fort Johnson on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861! He later wrote an account of that historic event.

My dad found the account, in The South Carolina historical and genealogical magazine, Volume 12. A plaintext copy (all thanks to the fine folks at Google, I assume) is here for posterity. You can see the original scanned PDF at that link above, and even download it in epub to read on a kindle(!?).

THE FIRST SHOT ON FORT SUMTER
By Robert Lebby (1833-1910), M. D.

The following paper was prepared about 1893, by the late Dr. Robert Lebby, for many years quarantine officer of the State of South Carolina at the port of Charleston, and by him given in 1906 to Mr. A. S. Salley, Jr., Secretary of the Historical Commission of South Carolina, for permanent preservation by the publication thereof. Mr. Salley permitted The News and Courier to print it in its issue of Monday, September 3, 1906, and presents it here for the twofold purpose of preserving a most conclusive presentation of evidence regarding the firing of the first hostile shot on Fort Sumter and of carrying out his promise to Dr. Lebby to have the paper published in permanent form.
April 12, 1893, will be the thirty-​second anniversary of the first shell fired at Fort Sumter, and is generally considered as the opening of the terrible struggle between the Northern and Southern sections of this great country—the one ostensibly for the preservation of the Union of these United States; the other for the maintenance of their rights under the Constitution of that Union, which they felt were being wrested from them by a fanatical element at the North.
Much has been written to prove the particular individual who fired the first shell at Fort Sumter, and thereby establish the fact of a questionable honor of having inaugurated the most momentous struggle in the history of the world, both as to its duration and the numbers engaged in it, and the tenacity with which those of the weaker section maintained themselves against those of the stronger, with the
3
whole of Europe to recruit their armies from and all the resources which their open ports afforded.
I purpose, as a witness to this opening episode in the great drama, beginning April 12, 1861, to give my recollection of it, along with that of others who were on the historic spot of Fort Johnson at that time, as there are but a few now left who were there and witnessed what took place thirty-​two years ago, in order that when the history of this gigantic struggle may be written in after years, some items may be obtained that will assist in its compilation.
In order that one not present on the spot may understand the situation of affairs at Fort Johnson at that time, I will state that there were two mortar batteries erected at Fort Johnson for the reduction of Fort Sumter. One situated on the front beach, midway between old Fort Johnson and the Lazaretto point, and directly west of Fort Sumter, and known as the beach, or east, battery (This was the most vulnerable and the weakest line of Fort Sumter), and the other was located due northwest of the former on a hill near some houses and contiguous to the present quarantine residence. The remains of this battery are still plainly visible. It was knOwn as the hill, or west, battery. The east, or beach, battery has been washed away by the sea, but I have saved the timber that was used in the construction of the magazine. This comprises the topography of the offensive works at Fort Johnson for the reduction of Sumter on April 12, 1861.
The post of Fort Johnson consisted, at that date, of these two batteries of mortars and a company of infantry as reserves, all under command of Captain George S. James, South Carolina State troops.
The battery on the beach, or east, was under the immediate command of Captain James, with Lieutenant Henry S. Farley as lieutenant, and the battery on the hill, or west, was under the immediate command of Lieutenant Wade Hampton Gibbes, I think with Lieutenant J. McPherson Washington as next, and the company of infantry, as reserves, was commanded by Lieutenant Theodore B. Hayne, and was stationed near the old Martello Tower, about 400
yards in the woods, to the northwest of the hill, or Gibbes, battery.
I have been thus particular in the location of the battery and its officers for reasons that will be apparent hereafter, and they are facts that cannot be contradicted.
The first point to be established is from what battery was the first mortar shell fired?
General Beauregard, Military Operations, page 42, chapter 4, last paragraph, says:
From Fort Johnson’s mortar battery at 4.30, A. M.,issued the first shell of the war. It was fired not by Mr. Ruffin, of Virginia, as has been erroneously supposed1, but by Capt. George S. James, of South Carolina, to whom Lieut. Stephen D. Lee issued the order.
Captain Stephen D. Lee, an aide of General Beauregard’s, and who, with Gen. Chesnut, informed Major Anderson that fire would be opened on Fort Sumter, says:
The first fire was from James’s battery.2
Mr. Edward H. Barnwell, of Charleston, who was present at Gibbes’s battery at the opening, says:
The first shell fired at Sumter was from James’s east battery (or the beach battery); the second was from the west (or hill battery). I was at this battery among some houses, one of which our forces tried to blow up, being too near the battery (Greer’s house). This was the battery under command of Lieut. W. H. Gibbes.
Dr. W. H. Prioleau, surgeon of the post, who was at the east, or beach, battery when the first shell was fired, states:
On the morning of April 12, 1861, as soon as orders were received to open fire on Fort Sumter, we repaired to our posts, and twentyfive or thirty minutes after 4, A. M., by my watch, which I held open in my hand at the time, the first gun was fired, this being the right-​hand mortar in the battery on the beach. I cannot recollect who pulled the lanyard, but this gun was directly in charge of Lieutenant Henry S. Farley, who, as well as I can recollect, sighted the gun. Captain James giving the order to fire.’
1“The venerable Edmund Ruffin, who, as soon as it was known a battle was inevitable, hastened over to Morris’ Island and was elected a member of the Palmetto Guard, fired the first gun from Stevens’ Iron Battery. All honor to the chivalric Virginian! May he live many years to wear the fadeless wreath that honor placed upon his brow on our glorious Friday.”—The Charleston Daily Courier, Saturday, April 13, 1861. (Note by A. S. S., Jr.)
2Vide Southern Historical Society Papers, November 1883, and other papers of Gen. Lee.
“Note this evidence.
Colonel Henry S. Farley, now of Mount Pleasant Military Academy, Sing Sing, New York, who was a lieutenant with James in the beach battery, states in a letter to me:
The circumstances attending the firing of the first gun at Sumter are q•uite fresh in my memory. Captain James stood on my right, with watch in hand, and at the designated moment gave me the order to fire. I pulled the lanyard, having already carefully inserted a friction tube, and discharged a thirteen-​inch mortar shell, which was the right of battery. In one of the issues of a Charleston evening paper, which appeared shortly after the reduction of Fort Sumter, you will find it stated that Lieutenant Farley fired the first gun, and Lieutenant Gibbes the second.4
I will now give my personal recollections of the affair. I am a native, and was a resident and practicing physician of James’ Island at the time the first gun was fired, and consequently was perfectly conversant with the topography of the location, and having been a college acquaintance of Captain James, was invited by him the previous day, April 11, to be on hand if anything transpired to require my services. I accepted his invitation and remained to witness the first, and last, gun fired at Sumter at that time.
My recollection of the matter is that on the morning of April 12, 1861, about ten minutes before 4, A. M., Captain S. D. Lee, with two other gentlemen, having just returned from Sumter, passed a group of four gentlemen, I among the number, and inquired for Captain James’s quarters, and when directed to the house occupied by Captain James, remarked on passing, that the ball would soon be opened.
A short time elapsed, when Captain James and others passed to the beach, or east, battery, and Captain Lee and his party went on down to the wharf. I was midway between the houses on a bridge that connected the beach and the hill, where I could see the fire of either battery, and at

“‘At thirty minutes past four o’clock the conflict was opened by the discharge of a shell from the Howitzer Battery on James’ Island, under the command of Captain GEO. S. JAMES, who followed the riddled Palmetto banner on the bloody battle fields of Mexico.
“The sending of this harmful messenger to Major Anderson was followed by a deafening explosion, which was caused by the blowing up of a building that stood in front of the battery.
“While the white smoke was melting away into the air another shell, which Lieut. W. HAMPTON GIBBES has the honor of having fired, pursued its noiseless way toward the hostile fortification.”—The Charleston Daily Courier, Saturday, April 13, 1861. (Note by A. S. S., Jr.)
4:30, A. M., a shell was fired from the beach, or east, battery, commanded by Captain James.
The second report heard was the blowing up of Greer’s house, contiguous to the hill battery, commanded by Lieutenant W. H. Gibbes, and the second shell was fired from this battery under Lieutenant Gibbes. The firing then became general around the harbor batteries bearing on Sumter.
We have, therefore, the concurrent testimony of General Beauregard, who ordered the fire to commence; of Captain Stephen D. Lee, the officer extending the order; of Lieutenant Farley, who was in the battery when the gun was fired, and of the medical officer, Dr. W. H. Prioleau, who was on duty in the battery; also of Lieutenant Edward H. Barnwell, who was present at the hill, or Gibbes, battery, and of myself, who all bear witness to the fact that the first shell was fired from Captain James’s battery on the beach. How, then, can anyone claim that the shell was fired from any other point with this weight of evidence against it?
As to the question of who pulled the lanyard of the mortar from which issued the first shell, there are only two living witnesses that I am cognizant of who were in the battery at the time of the fire, viz: Colonel Henry S. Farley and Dr. W. H. Prioleau. Colonel Henry S. Farley asserts in a letter to me that he pulled the lanyard by Captain James’s order, and Dr. Prioleau asserts that Lieutenant Farley had charge of the right gun of the battery, and that the first fire was from that gun, Captain James giving the order to fire, and it is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that Farley pulled the lanyard. Certain it is that either James or Farley fired it, but, as Captain James gave the order to fire, it must have been Farley, as James would never have given himself the order to fire. The order, therefore, must have been given to Farley. I, therefore, conclude that Lieutenant Henry S. Farley fired the first gun at Sumter by Captain James’s order.

PyPy testing

After reading Bob Ippolito’s excellent Playing with PyPy I was inspired to try PyPy out myself. I heard a ton of buzz coming out of PyCon that PyPy is wicked fast and wicked awesome. I wanted to take a look, and Bob’s instructions were a perfectly made intro.

A lot of the work I do is with strings (as you can see in my picloud testing from last year). I built a little test of PyPy vs Python2.6 vs Python 2.6 + Pyrex + C-Extension to see how things were going. After following the instructions I have PyPy 1.4.1, and OSX 10.6.6′s built in Python 2.6. My test case is pretty simple – compute the DoubleMetaphone representations of 94,293 names from the Census. First gather the data:

curl -O http://www.census.gov/genealogy/names/dist.all.last;
curl -O http://www.census.gov/genealogy/names/dist.female.first;
curl -O http://www.census.gov/genealogy/names/dist.male.first;

So, now we setup our test code. All it does is loop through those 3 files we just downloaded of names, grabs the name from each line, computes  the double metaphone values, and appends them to to a list.

I’m using two implementations of the DoubleMetaphone algorithm. First is Fuzzy, a library Jamie developed at Polimetrix that uses Pyrex to wrap the C implementation by Maurice Aubrey. The other version is Andrew Collin’s pure python one. For simplicity we’re going to call that atomodo.py after his domain.

pip install Fuzzy
curl http://www.atomodo.com/code/double-metaphone/metaphone.py/at_download/file > atomodo.py

My test.py:

import sys
 
if sys.argv[1] == 'atomodo':
	import atomodo
	dmeta = atomodo.dm
elif sys.argv[1] == 'fuzzy':
	import fuzzy
	dmeta = fuzzy.DMetaphone()
 
files = ['dist.all.last', 'dist.male.first', 'dist.female.first']
output = []
for file in files:
	fh = open(file)
	for row in fh:
		name = row[:15].strip()
		x = dmeta(name)
		output.append(x)

(pypy-1.4.1-osx64)kotai:perftesting chmullig$ time pypy test.py atomodo

real	0m3.098s
user	0m3.034s
sys	0m0.055s
(pypy-1.4.1-osx64)kotai:perftesting chmullig$ time python2.6 test.py atomodo # CPython

real	0m2.425s
user	0m2.390s
sys	0m0.032s
(pypy-1.4.1-osx64)kotai:perftesting chmullig$ time python2.6 test.py fuzzy

real	0m0.390s
user	0m0.357s
sys	0m0.032s

The results pretty well speak for themselves. C + Cython destroys the other two. Plain jane CPython is slightly faster than PyPy. Aside, but I ran all this with PYPY_GC_NURSERY=716K to help PyPy out. On my system that seemed like a sane default after running his script. I ran it with no PYPY_GC_NURSERY and the results were a bit slower across the board. In this case pypy was 3.180s without a GC_NURSERY value.

I decided to play around a little further at this point, to see if PyPy’s JIT would do better with more iterations. I tried two variations with different results for PyPy. In Variation A I loop the entire thing 10 times, inserting the loop above output = [], so the list is reset each time. In other words this is a loose loop, it opens the files 10 times, etc. The results are pretty interesting!

(pypy-1.4.1-osx64)kotai:perftesting chmullig$ time pypy test.py atomodo

real	0m19.907s
user	0m19.734s
sys	0m0.145s
(pypy-1.4.1-osx64)kotai:perftesting chmullig$ time python2.6 test.py atomodo

real	0m24.615s
user	0m24.450s
sys	0m0.160s
(pypy-1.4.1-osx64)kotai:perftesting chmullig$ time python2.6 test.py fuzzy

real	0m3.753s
user	0m3.608s
sys	0m0.143s

Variation B repeats just the double metaphone calculation 10 times, by wrapping x = dmeta(name). This does less work overall, because it doesn’t reopen the files, doesn’t have to iterate over them or substring + strip. PyPy does even better, comparatively.

(pypy-1.4.1-osx64)kotai:perftesting chmullig$ time pypy test.py atomodo

real	0m16.610s
user	0m16.511s
sys	0m0.083s
(pypy-1.4.1-osx64)kotai:perftesting chmullig$ time python2.6 test.py atomodo

real	0m23.929s
user	0m23.855s
sys	0m0.067s
(pypy-1.4.1-osx64)kotai:perftesting chmullig$ time python2.6 test.py fuzzy

real	0m2.526s
user	0m2.484s
sys	0m0.041s

So where does that leave us? Well if things scale perfectly the original times * 10 should be about the same as Variation A, and Variation B should be a tiny bit smaller (because it’s doing less work). However reality is always more confusing than we’d hope.

CPython running atomodo is quite consistent. The CPython+fuzzy is pretty darn fast and consistent too, seemingly getting more of an advantage from B than CPython+Atomodo. PyPy is crazy though. I would expect A and B to be faster than the original because JIT can work its magic more. However I was surprised by how much, and further surprised by how much B was faster than A. I guess the cache is very short lived or something?

Admittedly this test is flawed in 200 different ways. However it’s interesting to see where PyPy might be faster (very, very, very repetitive code; one pass calls dmeta(name) 94,293 times). I also know I’ll keep looking for C extensions.

Voter File Documentation Project?

Political Data Nerds,

I’ve spent far, far too many hours of my life working with voter files. Every voter file sucks in its own unique way, and figuring out exactly how Montana sucks differently from Kansas is a unique and constant battle. Well, I’m tired of it! I don’t want to have to re-learn these challenges next time I work on a file, I don’t want to dig for the raw documentation (only to realize that it’s not always accurate).

I’m thinking of starting/contributing to a resource that consolidates documentation on all voter files out there. It wouldn’t be the data, it would just be freely available documentation to help anyone who’s already working with the data work with it more easily. What do you think?

I imagine it would have a list of vendors who provide these services as well, but the focus would be on helping anyone who’s trying to do it themselves. Probably should also have some more general tech recommendations, like how to concatenate files together, standardize addresses, geocode, etc.

Questions it would most definitely answer for every voter file (at least states, counties aren’t that important to me right now):

• Where can I request this, and how much does it cost?
• What format is it? CSV? Tab delimited text? Does it have a header? One file per county, or one per state?
• How is vote history stored?
• How do I translate from their geopolitical districts to something “standard?”
• How do I translate from their counties to county FIPS codes?
• What fields does it contain? Name? Address? Date of Birth? Phone? Party?
• Mapping their vote history to some more global standard (for the common elections).

This wouldn’t be doing anything for you, but hopefully it would ease the pain of anyone having to work with raw voter files.

Pew’s Data for Democracy report is an excellent start. However it’s a static and higher level document. I’d like a living document that contains more concrete information, and can be easily updated.

Does anyone know of an existing project doing this that I could contribute to? If not, are there any platforms better than Mediawiki to use? I’d rather not spend a lot of time writing original code for this, but that might be inevitable if I don’t want to do a ton of copy/pasting in mediawiki (boy does Mediawiki suck, too)…

MITRE Challenge Graph

For my own curiosity I created a python + R script to grab the MITRE leaderboard and graph it. It’s a bit of python to grab the leaderboard and write out some CSVs. Then a bit of R code (updated link: http://a.libpa.st/4KFGq) generates the graph. It’s running automatically with launchd on my laptop, and it should be regularly uploading a png to the address below. Launchd is pretty awesome, but a royal pain in the ass to get set up. It doesn’t feel very deterministic.

I still need to figure out how to jitter the names so they don’t overlap (like YouGov & Agent Smith), but other than that I thought it was a nifty little exercise.

Each line is a team, with their best MAP scores as datapoints

MITRE Name Matching Challenge

My illustrious former colleague Ryan is now over at MITRE doing operations research and who knows what. He pointed me toward the MITRE Challenge.

The MITRE Challenge™ is an ongoing, open competition to encourage innovation in technologies of interest to the federal government. The current competition involves multicultural person name matching, a technology whose uses include vetting persons against a watchlist (for screening, credentialing, and other purposes) and merging or deduplication of records in databases. Person name matching can also be used to improve document searches, social network analysis, and other tasks in which the same person might be referred to by multiple versions or spellings of a name.

Basically they give you a small list of target names, and a ginormous list of candidate names, and for each target name you return up to 500 possible matches from the candidate name list. Currently the matching software we built at Polimetrix back in 2005-2007 is doing pretty well. It was designed for full voter records, but I broke out the name component by itself. The result is pretty awesome. Currently we’re ranked #1 at 72.038. Below us are a few teams, including Intaka at 68.801 and Beethoven at 58.501.

Stackoverflow overflow

Recently I’ve gotten a bit obsessed with stackoverflow.com. It’s a programming Q&A site. You can ask questions, you can answer and comment on them. However they have a sick twist – people vote on everything. They vote on your questions, answers, comments. You earn reputation points when your content is voted up, and you lose points when it’s voted down. You also earn badges, like gaming achievements.

They’ve recently started a whole bunch of related sites under the stackexchange brand. Same model and software, but with different subjects. So far there are already more than I care to count with only very spurious differentiation, but a few highlights include gaming, cooking, english, programming (as a profession), power users, sysadmin, linux, ubuntu, and a lot more.

Here’s my badge of honor. Right now I have 674 rep and 10 badges on Stackoverflow, and 261/4 on gaming (plus ~100 on a bunch of the other sites, just for signing up). That’s my profile image, which should update automatically!

It’s amazing how satisfying and competitive the Q&A system ends up. I find myself less and less interested in any other medium for asking or answering questions like the kind on Stackoverflow. It’s slow and there’s no rep, what’s the point?

241543903

241543903

Check it out: 241543903.

Programming Challenges

I’m a fan of puzzles, programming and learning, so I’ve always enjoyed The Python Challenges. Recently my coworkers Delia, Chris and I came up with the idea of doing some of those within the company to help ourselves and our coworkers become more familiar with Python and R (and to a lesser extent SQL and other languages).

The end result is the YG Challenge, where we’ll be posting a few problems a week in at least R & Python, then solving them. Week 1 is up, and we have some great ideas for the future. Intended for our coworkers, it’s public because why not! Feel free to take a stab at solving them, especially if you haven’t used either of those languages before.

Burrito Wednesday Super Post!

I’ve been very, very bad about posting recent burrito wednesdays. Luckily I’ve still been doing it nearly every week (missed a few while traveling). I’m going to just post ‘em here en masse and then hopefully get back on schedule.

Burrito Wednesday #9: Food Chain

Food Chain is a collaboration between some clever guy and a bunch of existing vendors to provide better food out of the carts. He preps it, and they sell it ala franchises. This is a cart down near 17th and Connecticut. They technically call it a wrap, and I don’t recall being especially impressed by it. The sauce was pretty good, but the rest was pretty meh. Not much too it, rice, beans and not a whole lot else. Overall maybe 2 stars?

The Food Chain cart I went to on M St

Food Chain Burrito

Burrito Wednesday #10: California Tortilla

Cal Tort is one of my favorites, especially after I won 52 free burritos. Unfortunately I didn’t give them a fair shake for Burrito Wednesday – going to an out of the way spot (College Park) at an off time (early on a quiet summer weekday). They weren’t there best, but still pretty tasty. I really dig the new No Meato Burrito with cheese. It has a nice sauce. One of the real highlights of CalTort is the impressive hot sauce selection – including Brian’s favorite Dave’s Insanity – which will burn you. Burn you good. Overall still one of the best ones – 3.5 stars? 4? I don’t even remember my scale anymore.

Delicious California Tortilla burrito. Huge and tasty.

I missed the next Burrito Wednesday because I was on vacation, and the best/only burrito place I could find was closed on Wednesdays. D’oh!

Burrito Wednesday #11: Sancho’s Taqueria

I was in Palo Alto that week, so I went out with a huge cohort of coworkers to Sancho’s Taqueria. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pics. However the burrito was delicious. Chris is a fan of of the no veggie, no meat one, but I found the veggies to be delectable. They also had some tasty sauces you could take away. Bravo! 4 stars?

Burrito Wednesday #12: Taco Bell

Why I did this, I don’t really know. It was close, and I didn’t have many other close options left. Still…. I got a single bean burrito. It was shockingly cheap ($0.99 maybe?), and shockingly bad. It tasted overwhelming of salt. It wasn’t very large, and was pretty pathetically bad. Ugh. 1 star, at best. I’m glad to confirm there’s a reason I avoid this place.

Being a combination Taco Bell/KFC is really not appealing to me at all. Ugh.

Burrito Wednesday #13: Qdoba

I wanted to like this place, since a few friends rave about it. However I was quite disappointed. One point in there favor was that I had been to the dentist that morning – so perhaps my mouth was extra sensitive? I didn’t notice anything at breakfast, but maybe this was different?

The staff was pretty rude. After I agreed to pay extra for veggies they only put a small scooping on. I asked for more, and they were annoyed. I think a manager saw I was peeved and stepped in, which definitely improved the situation.  The burrito was large and moderately priced. Unfortunately I found the texture to be incredibly off putting. The peppers were slightly bitter and had a very odd and inconsistent crunch to them. The rice was occasionally pretty hard. In the end I couldn’t finish it, and left feeling pretty disappointed. Still much better than taco bell, and again perhaps another location/time would be better. Overall no more than 2 stars.

Qdoba looks tasty, don't it?

I missed the next 2 weeks due to being in Europe. I’m sure I could have gotten tasty burritos in Amsterdam at least, but I was more interested in trying the local cuisines.

Burrito Wednesday #14: Mixtec

Back in the US it was time for another Burrito Wednesday. I grabbed a bike and headed up to Adam’s Morgan for Mixtec. Somewhat unusually I ate it there. The burrito was quite large and pretty good. It had 2 sauces, plus some hot sauces they put on the side. The guac and pico de gallo on the plate were a nice compliment. My biggest complaint was that it was a ton of tortilla, especially toward the end. I ended up leaving a lot of tortilla on the plate, after removing the inners. Overall it was better than I expected – 3 stars?

As an aside, the bike rental worked really well. I think I’ll sign up for a $50 yearly membership and try it out.

Mixtec burrito and inside.