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A mentor I respect memorably explained to young me that “it doesn’t matter how big the pot of soup, you can use the same size spoon to taste it.”
by alwa 2y ago
A mentor I respect memorably explained to young me that “it doesn’t matter how big the pot of soup, you can use the same size spoon to taste it.”
- beefnugs 2y agoSorry but that mentor has a small practical imagination, a pot can be so large that the top 3 feet that you reach with that spoon could be all oil
- alwa 2y agoTrue! Consistency and representativeness matter, in soup samples as in social samples! Is the soup smooth or lumpy? Striated or uniform? For that matter a soup could (and often does) involve huge soup bones that give it important parts of its flavor, but never show up directly in a spoonful. And you might need something different from a spoon to convincingly rule out some specific rare lumpy ingredient. The didactic value of sampling the soup pot goes well behind its basic function: correcting the beginner’s misperception that a sample’s statistical power is directly related to population size :)
- skeeter2020 2y agoto push this analogy too far, that's because you didn't stir it well, not because the spoon is too small.