Table 1 High structural efficiency of informal services

From: Efficient self-organization of informal public transport networks

Observable

Median Informal

Median Formal

p-value

Detour Heterogeneity ξ*

0.011

0.070

0.0007

Total Detour D*

0.12

0.45

0.00005

Number of intermediate routes C

0.670

0.675

0.48

  1. Both detour heterogeneity ξ and total detour D exhibit substantially lower median values (median across city medians) for cities with informal services than they do for cities with formal services. The p-values of the Mann-Whitney U rank statistics test indicate the probability of a similar or more extreme outcome of the ordering if the observations from both categories were drawn from the same distribution, thus strongly suggesting that the observed differences are non-random (indicated by a*, compare Fig. 3a, b). In contrast, the average number C of intermediate routes required to switch between two routes of informal services is statistically indistinguishable from that of formal services. Population-weighted comparisons support the same conclusions (see Supplementary Note 13 and Supplementary Table 3).
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