A new paper from the School of Continuous Improvement reads a strip-mall pizzeria's hand-drawn free-delivery line as a natural cutoff, and the Review Cadence Observatory now takes the line's radius as the catchment for every University consultation.
A paper on a pizzeria's free-delivery line sets every consultation's radius at 3.04 km, re-inked each teaching period
Whether a household is heard in a University consultation will now depend on which side of a pen stroke it sits. The Review Cadence Observatory has adopted a Catchment Standing Order that takes its radius, 3.04 km, from the free-delivery line drawn in felt pen on the window map of a strip-mall pizzeria, and draws that radius by hand on a laminated map held at its front desk.
The order follows Freehand, Therefore Final: A Regression-Discontinuity Estimate at a Pizzeria’s Felt-Pen Delivery Line, a new paper from the School of Continuous Improvement.
A line that anyone can re-ink is a line that belongs to everyone who has stood in front of it.
— Dr Osei Vandermeer, Research Fellow and Convenor, Review Cadence Observatory
The paper compares 4,127 households, as recorded in thirty months of order slips, on either side of the line. Ordering steps up at the line while the service itself, from delivery time to cold-arrival complaints, carries on as before. The Observatory reads the result as evidence that a boundary drawn by hand can do a catchment’s work. Its Convenor re-inks the map once each teaching period, and the order provides no override.
Marit Osayande, Lecturer and Convenor, Living Dashboard, said the paper shows how much a shared line can carry “once somebody has agreed to draw it”. The University is pleased to see the line put to work across its consultations, and regards the arrangement as a modest and durable addition to its habit of listening.
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.th64pr.