Lady tasting tea

Wasn't this demonstrated by the Royal Chemical Society that pouring the milk into the tea creates a detectable trace of caramelization of the milk sugar or protein denaturation due to the momentary high temperature on the milk while the tea:milk ratio was very high at the initial pour?

https://www.vahdam.com/blogs/tea-us/milk-first-or-last-the-s...

Re: Lady tasting tea

#9

Post by zug_zug » Sun, Sep 01, 2024, 5:20 PM UTC

> Thus, if and only if the lady properly categorized all 8 cups was Fisher willing to reject the null hypothesis – effectively acknowledging the lady's ability at a 1.4% significance level (but without quantifying her ability).

Important to realize though, that failure to categorize all 8 doesn't prove anything either. It just means this one experiment isn't conclusive in itself (at 95% confidence).

It's good to be aware of how easy it can be to get a false result by chance, but it's imo a worse statistical sin to propose that not proving something is proving the opposite (a mistake I see quite often).

Re: Lady tasting tea

#10

Post by zug_zug » Sun, Sep 01, 2024, 5:25 PM UTC

To me when I first came across this in college it was fascinating. I think any stem field should be taught about these statistical methods.

The power of being able to put an objective answer on any personal claim (e.g. mint gives me a headache) with statistics & a blind design is a very powerful tool to approach fields where our science just isn't good yet (psychology, health, etc).