A restaurant critic for a newspaper examines the prices restaurants charge for their meals and discovers that the restaurants that raised their prices most over the past year also have the longest wait times for tables.

The critic has found that the restaurants with the biggest price increases also have the longest waits, but that alone does not show that one causes the other. A possible third factor is restaurant quality: higher-quality restaurants may be able to charge more and may attract enough customers to create longer waits. This makes “Higher-quality restaurants might charge more for meals and could also have longer wait times” the best explanation.

AI-written and checked against the verified answer.