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Lady tasting tea
- m463 2y ago> in the actual experiment the lady succeeded in identifying all eight cups correctly. :)
- playingalong 2y agoBerry. I hate tea with milk.
- brcmthrowaway 2y ago[flagged]
- jitl 2y agoIn 1935?
- bloopernova 2y agoI wonder how many valves would be needed to build an "AI-capable" computer? And how much electricity would it consume? Although the heat it generated would probably boil the Great Lakes!
- jitl 2y agoActually I went and read a bit about the history here, and although I left a glib comment, there was major practical research into neural network approaches, with theory in 1943 and hardware by 1953 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron There were two major factors though that set back the neural net approach: - a 1969 Minsky & Papert book on perceptrons lead to a belief that neural nets even of >1 layers had fundamental limits, although the book only showed such limits in 1-layer nets; this lead to a reduction in funding during various AI winters - the “deep” in “deep learning” is all about how much larger & deeper neural systems produce substantially better results. Even if you can speculate theoretically about this, it was completely impractical to approach the scale/speed to see fruitful results until the late 90s when vector/matrix accelerators (SIMD, GPU-type things) start showing up en masse. I vaguely remember reading about advances in ML in the mid 2000s which sort of had an attitude of “huh, this neural net thing we thought was a dead end turns out to just need MOAR CORES (graph up and to the right)”
- dekhn 2y agoEven in the 90s through the late 2000s, when I started working in ML, people poo-poo'd it: not enough data, not good enough algorithms, and computers too slow. And I worked with supercomputers/HPC- you'd think they would have been the first groups to exploit machine learning. The perceptron was actually a remarkable cool device, way ahead of its time.
- klyrs 2y agoShouldn't need a lick of electricity! If by valves you mean fluidics [1]... at which point, harnessing the Niagra Falls and building out a fluidized supercomputer covering the great lakes would probably suffice. No worries about the waste heat, though, it's water cooled! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics
- bloopernova 2y agoApologies, I meant a vacuum tube: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube
- 082349872349872 2y agoThey had matchboxes in 1935*, so https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_Educable_Noughts_and_Crosses_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_Educable_Noughts_and_... could've been a quarter-century earlier. * since the XIX? https://matchesmuseum.com/en/match-history/ https://matchesmuseum.com/en/match-history/
- mmh0000 2y agoOf course, any article mentioning tea, must include a reference to ISO 3103 — A Standardized Method for Brewing Tea[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103
- ahazred8ta 2y agoproducing "a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea" - h2g2
- LeonB 2y agoI think the song TUSA, in which Ginger Baker describes the process of making Tea is also a required reference for any articles on the topic. - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DTuXBoA688Y https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DTuXBoA688Y
- rahulnair23 2y agoThe ISO link[1] says this standard has been withdrawn however. [1] https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:3103:ed-1:v1:en https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:3103:ed-1:v1:en
- lr4444lr 2y agoWasn'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-science-the-stories-the-slurping https://www.vahdam.com/blogs/tea-us/milk-first-or-last-the-s...
- BinRoo 2y agoThat wouldn't undermine or deter from the point: > The null hypothesis is that the subject has no ability to distinguish the teas Since the hypothesis was invalidated, we can begin investigating _how_ she's able to distinguish it, which is what you're getting at.
- TheOtherHobbes 2y agoI've always preferred the taste of milk-first, and it never crossed my mind that the difference wasn't noticeable. I didn't realise it was a class marker until someone described it as "a bit MBT" (milk before tea.) Apparently where they were from this subtle social shading really mattered.
- nicbou 2y agoApparently milk before tea is lower class because poor people would want to avoid cracking low quality porcelain with hot tea. Fascinating!
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoWas that a genuine concern? Boiling water has a fixed maximum temperature. Not sure that room temp->90C is all that different from room temp to 100C for ceramic.
- aidenn0 2y agoWith a very thick glass, you definitely can crack it with boiling water. I didn't know if earthenware is similarly susceptible, but anything that is both brittle, and has a high enough rate of thermal expansion would be.
- zug_zug 2y ago> 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).
- sjmcmahon 2y agoThis is generally good advice, but isn't it inappropriate in this specific instance? The lady's claim was (allegedly) that she has a perfect ability to distinguish between the tea-milk orders, so in that case even a single failure is indeed enough to reject her claim. We can't rule out her success rate being significantly greater than 50-50, but even a single failure puts some bounds on her maximum success rate.
- zug_zug 2y ago>> The lady's claim was (allegedly) that she has a perfect ability to distinguish between the tea-milk orders I believe you added the word "perfect" which makes a substantive difference. I think this highlights the complications that get involved when trying to turn a simple proposition into an meaningful claim: - Can we prove that person X can observe taste of tea with > 50% reliability with 95% confidence (what Fischer did) - Can we prove that person X can observe taste of tea with 100% reliability with 95% confidence (not statistically possible) - Can we prove that person X cannot observe taste of tea with > 50% reliability with 95% confidence (only possible if this person guesses wrong more often than randomly) - Can we prove that person X cannot observe taste of tea with 100% reliability with 95% confidence (just need one example)
- af3d 2y agoThe probability of guessing all eight correctly is 0.5^8 (or roughly 0.39%). The chances of such a thing happening by mere fluke are quite slim. Now personally, I would have preferred a few more glasses to be even more certain, but hey, for all practical purposes those results do seem fairly credible.
- zug_zug 2y agoTo 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).
- YZF 2y agoI'm pretty sure they are taught this. There's a different between taught and having an in-depth understanding of what makes a good experiment.
- zug_zug 2y agoMaybe they are, I don't know what's taught in a CS major, but a shocking number of my coworkers don't seem to understand the basics of statistical sampling which makes me wonder if they even had 2 courses on it.
- jibbit 2y ago> upper classes pour first the tea, while the lower classes poured the milk first this is because of the fear that boiling water will crack your best tea cups?
- throwaway984393 2y agoGood tea cups would never crack from boiling water, unless they were frozen first. Tea first is probably due to the fact that everybody wants tea, but not everybody wants milk, and some people want to pour their own amount of milk. You offer tea, they accept, you pour tea, you offer milk.
- Loughla 2y ago>lower classes poured the milk first >Good tea cups would never crack from boiling water That's sort of the point OP was making, I think. Poor folks wouldn't be able to afford good quality tea cups?
- throwaway984393 2y ago[dead]
- Horffupolde 2y agoThat’s one reason. The other one is that when you have a small amount of total milk, you have to make sure there’s enough for everyone. By pouring milk first you can more easily measure how much milk you pour per cup.
- bikenaga 2y agoAnd "The Lady Tasting Tea" by David Salsburg is a nice history of statistics; 29 chapters, a little over 320 pages. [New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001; ISBN 0-8050-7134-2 (PB)]
- nabaraz 2y agoVery interesting. What are some other hypothesis, provoking random articles?
- codeulike 2y agoGeorge Orwell has entered the chat https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/a-nice-cup-of-tea/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... ... one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoRight, because it's much harder to measure a specific amount of milk in isolation than to eyeball how much of it you've just added to something else. If you were concerned about regulating the amount of milk you were adding, tea first wouldn't even be a possibility.
- markdown 2y agoI assume you are being sarcastic. Drinking vessels come in all different sizes, from dainty little tea cups to mugs that hold an entire litre. Measuring the milk requires both measuring the steep time exactly, and using a separate measuring cup. This wastes time and adds unnecessary cleanup. Stirring as you add milk to the tea allows you to tell exactly the right amount for that cup (and for how long the tea was steeped) based on the colour of the beverage.
- seoulmetro 2y agoMeasure is not being used as a literal verb. It's being used as an approximate measure. The same way we measure how much time we spend doing a task without a clock.
- markdown 2y agoNo it's not. Read again > measure a specific amount of milk in isolation than to eyeball how much of it you've just added to something else
- teddyh 2y agoThe 1967 British TV series The Prisoner, episode A Change Of Mind, prescribes the milk-first method, as part of a general instruction on how to make “a decent cup of tea”.
- chrsw 2y agoI heard about this recently but I can't remember where. Was the topic of this tea test on a podcast or something recently?
- xandrius 2y agoTo solve this debacle, I only brew my tea in milk. Much better taste. I'd rather just plain tea than water tea + milk, it just seems the worst of both worlds to me.
- Loughla 2y agoJesus Christ I hope you're joking with the brewing tea in milk. That's terrifying.
- taejo 2y agoThere are more teas in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. For example Kashmiri noon chai is tea boiled in milk for about an hour with baking soda before adding ice. It is then aerated by pouring between cups to make it slightly foamy.
- xandrius 2y agoNot sure what's terrifying about it, terrifyingly tasty! Also several cultures around the world do that pretty commonly.
- telesilla 2y agoI do this with 'spiced chai' (cardomom or other spice teas). It gives a delicious full flavour, but ugh no cow milk please. Oat or almond.
- Sander_Marechal 2y agoMy father-in-law does that with coffee. Fill a mug with milk, add two scoops of instant coffee, 60 seconds in the microwave at 800W, stir, another 10-30 seconds in the microwave, stir, drink. He won't have it any other way.
- ngcc_hk 2y agoAlways tell this story how today stat evolve out from experimental design and becomes non-baynesian
- westcort 2y agoNot mentioned here is the lady’s name, Muriel Bristol. I have also heard that this is a different way with 6 cups. This matters because 6C3 = 6! / (3!(6-3)!) = 20. That 1/20 chance of getting all 3 cups right is said to be the basis for the 5% significance cutoff for p values. Another basis for the 5% cutoff is the (even earlier) Poisson distribution, with zero expected events, 3 observed. In this case, the probability of occurrence by chance is 1/e^3, which is just under 5%. In other words, the 5% p value is analogous to “3 strikes you’re out” because the probability of 3 uncommon events or exceptions is <5%. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Bristol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Bristol