How Pure Is This Cup of Joe?
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How Pure Is This Cup of Joe?
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Re: How Pure Is This Cup of Joe?
#2[deleted]
Re: How Pure Is This Cup of Joe?
#3[edit] Here's a photo of the back of a bag of his "reference" Trung Nguyen S blend. It explicitly says that it has flavorings in it, including "coffee flavor". Omfg.
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I guess the guy had fun, but the conclusion is a few giant leaps away from the actual results. Many of his decisions and assumptions were entirely arbitrary, not well substantiated, and lacking just about anything approaching rigor.
His reference coffee is "A blend of Arabica, Robusta, Chari (Excelsa) and Catimor beans"[1], roasted in a special style, and brewed in one particular way with no mention of temperatures involved or any other variable that alters the outcome of brewing coffee.
Trung Nguyen coffees are as far as I know usually adulterated with chocolate and other flavoring either during or after roasting. This is not a bad thing. It smells and tastes goddamn fantastic and they are my favorite coffees in the world. But it's not exactly a good reference.
His reference chart includes only two of those bean types and specifically references green beans, not roasted beans, not butter roasted beans, and not beans roasted at any particular range of temperatures or durations.
He doesn't indicate that a reference coffee was chosen based on lowest wholesale cost, which might have been a reasonable decision factor for a street vendor, but rather just that it seems to be commonly available on the consumer market without regard for composition or lack of monopoly.
His reference not-coffee is only one of plausibly dozens of different not-coffee substances.
His reference not-coffee solution is based on approximately tasting like terrible coffee. Whaaaaaat.
And even if you choose to ignore any or all of the above, nothing about his method tests for coffee. Coffee is generically an extremely complex blend of varying volatile compounds, but specifically it is an infinity of different complex blends of varying volatile compounds. And his process doesn't actually test for any of them. It tests for some secondary characteristic that one mixture possesses, ability to change the color of iodine, but that one arbitrarily different other chemical does not possess to the same degree under the assumption that all real coffee changes the color of iodine the same and that all non-coffee also changes the color of iodine the same. These are exceptionally ridiculous assumptions.
[1] http://www.trung-nguyen-online.com/trung-nguyen-coffee-order...
> Overall it sounds like a reasonable test for the amount of coffee in something
No, it really does not.
This is what happens when people think that "science" is synonymous with measuring shit.
Re: How Pure Is This Cup of Joe?
#4You should test the major chain coffees
Re: How Pure Is This Cup of Joe?
#5[edit] Here's a photo of the back of a bag of his "reference" Trung Nguyen S blend. It explicitly says that it has flavorings in it, including "coffee flavor". Omfg. https://imgur.com/a/KeSYq --- I guess the guy had fun, but the conclusion is a few giant leaps away from the actual results. Many of his decisions and assumptions were entirely arbitrary, not well substantiated, and lacking just about anything approachin…
Why stomp all over somebody's fun? I enjoyed reading it.
Re: How Pure Is This Cup of Joe?
#6[edit] Here's a photo of the back of a bag of his "reference" Trung Nguyen S blend. It explicitly says that it has flavorings in it, including "coffee flavor". Omfg. https://imgur.com/a/KeSYq --- I guess the guy had fun, but the conclusion is a few giant leaps away from the actual results. Many of his decisions and assumptions were entirely arbitrary, not well substantiated, and lacking just about anything approachin…
Why stomp all over somebody's fun? I enjoyed reading it.
Because awareness of the gap between measurement and conclusion might just be the most important thing in the world, and people and governments fail spectacularly at it all the time with significant lasting effects on society.
Re: How Pure Is This Cup of Joe?
#7> Finally, I used LibreOffice to tabulate and graph the data, and perform t-tests. T-tests are simple statistical tests used to determine the probability that a null hypothesis (H0) is correct. If it is less than 5% probable that the null hypothesis is correct given our data, we will reject the null hypothesis and consider our alternate hypothesis (HA) to be correct.
Obligatory stats nerd: that's not what a p-value means, that reverses it.
Re: How Pure Is This Cup of Joe?
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why stomp all over somebody's fun? I enjoyed reading it.
Because awareness of the gap between measurement and conclusion might just be the most important thing in the world, and people and governments fail spectacularly at it all the time with significant lasting effects on society.
> the gap between measurement and conclusion might just be the most important thing in the world
What happened to love, compassion and humility?
Re: How Pure Is This Cup of Joe?
#9[edit] Here's a photo of the back of a bag of his "reference" Trung Nguyen S blend. It explicitly says that it has flavorings in it, including "coffee flavor". Omfg. https://imgur.com/a/KeSYq --- I guess the guy had fun, but the conclusion is a few giant leaps away from the actual results. Many of his decisions and assumptions were entirely arbitrary, not well substantiated, and lacking just about anything approachin…
Why stomp all over somebody's fun? I enjoyed reading it.
Take that anti-cynical perspective back to Reddit thank you, here in Hacker News we have no time for such leniency.
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On a serious note, I enjoyed reading it. I think it's clear(ish?) that the approach taken by the author leaves a little to be desired, he seems to be modest and quite aware of this.
It's no different to Myth Busters really. They use the scientific process and rarely express them selves past a sample size of one. But for the purpose of advocating science and it's methods, I think it's good. If it's not well... I'll leave you all to stick to reading Journals?
Re: How Pure Is This Cup of Joe?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because awareness of the gap between measurement and conclusion might just be the most important thing in the world, and people and governments fail spectacularly at it all the time with significant lasting effects on society.
> the gap between measurement and conclusion might just be the most important thing in the world What happened to love, compassion and humility?
Trying to get to the factually right conclusion is an expression of humility, because it allows admitting that our initial expectations were wrong.
Using the right conclusion to properly guide our actions is necessary for compassion and love -- if you truly with to benefit others, then your actions must be correct and guided by the right answers.
The challenge is updating other people's beliefs without being seen as an attack.