How We Determine the #1 Restaurant
A fundamentally different approach to rankings — built on decision science, not star ratings.
Why Star Ratings Are Broken
Every review platform uses the same model: ask people to rate things on a scale. It seems intuitive. It's also fundamentally flawed.
The "My 5-Star Problem":
You give five restaurants 5 stars. Which one do you actually prefer? The star rating can't tell you. Your true preference is lost in the averaging.
The "Anchor Bias":
Different people use stars differently. Your 4-star might be someone else's 5-star. Averaging these together produces noise, not signal.
The "Social Proof Trap":
You see a restaurant at 4.7 stars. Does that reflect quality, or popularity? Review platforms reward volume and recency, not genuine preference.
These aren't edge cases — they're structural flaws in how every major platform measures quality. We started from scratch.
A Better Question
Instead of asking "How much do you like this restaurant?" we ask a simpler, more honest question:
"Which do you prefer: A or B?"
Two choices. One winner. No ambiguity. This is how your brain actually makes decisions — not on a 5-point scale, but through direct comparison. It's the most natural form of evaluation humans have.
From the pattern of these simple choices, your true preferences emerge — preferences you might not have even known you had. People regularly discover that their actual taste differs from what they assumed.
That's not a bug. That's the point.
Proven Mathematics
Our ranking engine is built on peer-reviewed statistical models used across competitive domains — the same family of mathematics behind chess rankings, sports analytics, and machine learning evaluation.
These models are battle-tested across decades of research. They extract reliable rankings from pairwise comparison data with provable statistical properties. The more comparisons, the more precise the rankings become.
What This Means:
Unlike star ratings, our rankings are mathematically grounded. They converge to stable, reproducible results as data accumulates. Given enough participation, we can determine the city's true collective preference with statistical confidence.
That's the outrageous claim: we will determine, with mathematical certainty, the actual #1 restaurant in Edmonton. And the math backs it up.
Three Truths, Not One
Most platforms give you one answer: the crowd's answer. We believe that's only part of the picture.
🧭 Your Best
Your personal rankings are sacred. Your #1 might be a hole-in-the-wall nobody else rates highly. That's your truth, and we'll never average it away.
👥 Your Tribe
People whose tastes genuinely mirror yours — not based on demographics, but on the mathematical similarity of your actual preferences. Their recommendations are the ones you can trust.
🏙️ The City's Best
The aggregate consensus — what Edmonton collectively values most. Important, but no more true than your personal list. One lens among three.
Mended isn't a map where everyone gets the same directions. It's a compass that reveals which direction you point — then finds others whose compass points the same way.
Honest About Uncertainty
Not all rankings are equally confident. A restaurant that's been compared hundreds of times has a more reliable position than one compared a handful of times.
We track confidence for every ranking. Early rankings are exploratory — they sharpen as you and others make more comparisons. We'll always tell you how sure we are.
Transparency about uncertainty is part of our commitment to honesty. If we don't have enough data to make a strong claim, we'll say so.
Ready to Shape Edmonton's Rankings?
Your preferences matter. Every comparison you make improves the collective ranking.
Start Ranking →