This dataset is obtained from Kaggle (https://www.kaggle.com/residentmario/ramen-ratings), and collated by Aleksey Bilogur from the information on theramenrater.com. The most recent update was 2 years ago. The ratings were given by theramenrater.com, and do not reflect my personal opinions about these ramen brands. I have limited knowledge about ramen and have only eaten a few Korean brands (Nongshim and Samyang) and Malaysian brand (MyKuali) ramen. I did this analysis for entertainment purpose and to practice using R and Tableau. I am relatively new in the field of analytics. So, accuracies are not guaranteed and feel free to shoot me an email (boonxin1994@gmail.com) or message me if you have any comments about this piece of “analysis”. I might update this again with better analysis.
1. How does packaging (style of packaging) affect ratings?
The first question that comes into my mind was how would packaging affect ratings? So, I used R to do independent 2 samples t-tests to compare the average ratings of 3 different packaging styles: pack (59.37%), bowl (18.67%) and cup (17.46%), because they are the most popular packaging styles in the dataset.
I compared the average ratings of:
a) “pack” style with “bowl” style
p-value = 0.591. Do not reject the null hypothesis, hence there is no significant difference between average ratings of the two styles.
b) “cup” style with “bowl” style
p-value= 0.01237. There is a significant difference between average ratings of cup and bowl styles, with bowl having higher ratings than cup.
c) “cup” style with “pack” style
p-value= 0.0002525. There is a significant difference between average ratings of cup and pack styles, with pack having higher ratings than cup.
Conclusion: pack=bowl > cup, in terms of ratings. I definitely prefer packed ramen compared to any other styles. Bowl and cup ramen's texture is harder.
2. Association between brand’s stars ratings and number of varieties of a brand
Next, I tried to see if more varieties under a brand would increase or decrease the brand's average rating. Just by using Tableau, I find no apparent correlation between ratings of a brand and the number of varieties. The one outlier is Nissin with 381 varieties and an average rating of 3.919. It is very impressive. R-squared= 0.0050722
Color represents the brand.
Conclusion: The number of varieties under a brand does not have an association with the average rating of the brand. Perhaps good brands, Like Nissin can release as many varieties as they want as long as the quality stays consistent.
3. Country with the most brand/variety
I would like to know which countries have the most number of brands and varieties. Using Tableau, I found out that Japan has the highest (352), followed by USA (324), and then South Korea (323). Some varieties could be only available or specifically for a certain country, although the brand itself is not from that country. For example, Nissin has 5 varieties for Brazil, while Nissin itself is a Japanese brand. This result does not surprise me too much, knowing that Japan is the origin country of instant ramen. It is interesting to learn that the USA has the second-highest number of brands, even more than South Korea. But this could be explained by the same reasoning as the Brazil case, or it could just be inaccuracies in data collection by the website.
Conclusion: Japan has the most number of brands and varieties, followed by the United States and South Korea.
4. Brands and countries with the highest average ratings
I am also interested in learning the best brands and countries with the best ramen brands or varieties. Apparently, there are more than 20 brands receiving 5-stars ratings. I have never tried any of these brands. When we look at the breakdown by countries (with more than 10 varieties), Malaysian brands have the highest rating of 4.158 (and reasonably high number of varieties of 158), followed by Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, and Myanmar.
Conclusion: Malaysia has the best ramen. Yay! Malaysian pride <3
Lastly, I would like to present to you a really nice graph without much usefulness.
Conclusion of the conclusions:
Pack and bowl ramens taste better than cup ramen. There is no association between brand varieties and ratings. Japan has the most ramen brands and varieties. Malaysia has the best ramen.
Again, this is just for entertainment purposes. I am not ramen connoisseur. I will try to do better analysis with better tools/skills, as I learn more about analytics. The dataset is definitely biased since the ratings are generated by the contributors of the theramenrater.com. It is not up-to-date as well.
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