Most medieval store frequency generators I've seen on the internet are based on a PDF by an S. John Ross, who seems to think shoemaking stores were the most common in medieval times. Is this accurate?

by DrippyWaffler

PDF in question.

From the PDF - For instance, the SV for shoemakers (by far the most common trade in towns) is 150.

To find the number of, say, inns in a city, divide the population of the city by the SV value for inns (2,000). For a village of 400 people, this reveals only 20% of an inn! This means that there is a 20% chance of there being one at all. And even if there is one, it will be smaller and less impressive than an urban inn. The SV for taverns is 400, so there will be a single tavern.

This means for just 150 people in a town there will be a cobbling shop, but no bakers, barbers, butchers or blacksmiths. Is this an accurate depiction?

LootPillageBurn

Medieval Demographics Made Easy is very popular and often useful, but it has its critics. For example http://ravenswing59.blogspot.com/2013/10/medieval-demographics-done-right.html suggests the business data came from one document, which wasn't a good representative sample.4