7 ms·

Coke Engineers Its Orange Juice—With an Algorithm

55 points by duck 14y ago

scovetta 14y ago
I'm officially calling bullshit on the algorithm requiring "one quintillion variables".
- sjwright 14y ago
  Perhaps they're keeping track of each atom individually.
- tantalor 14y ago
  Combinatorial explosion?
- unwind 14y ago
  I was skeptical too, but all it takes is 60 bits, i.e. 60 "yes/no"-questions in their "black book". Doesn't sound too far-fetched. But, of course, I do hope they're not brute-forcing it. See http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=log2%28one+quintillion%29 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=log2%28one+quintillion%....
  - kd5bjo 14y ago
    That's only 60 variables, which can produce a quintillion variations.
- mturmon 14y ago
  I think bullshit is it. The best way I could think of to generate lots of variables is a random forest classifier, which is an ensemble of (say) thousands of trees. Each tree constructs a lot of variables at each node, so maybe you'd have (stretching here) hundreds of thousands to perhaps millions of variables. But 1e6 << 1e18. Maybe they're counting each pixel of some remote sensing image of orange groves? Bullshit again, that would have to be a 1e9 x 1e9 pixel image. I'd believe it from NGA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligence_Agency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligenc...), but not from Coke. If there's a shred of truth to it, they're using some dodgy mechanism to increase the variable count.
  - greatzebu 14y ago
    It seems more likely that the reporter made a mistake, and there are actually a quintillion possible internal states generated from a relatively small number of variables, not a quintillion variables.
- mistermcgruff 14y ago
  BlackBook is a mixed-integer programming model implemented in OPL/CPLEX (used to be an ILOG product until IBM bought them). So all this stuff about classifiers is off base. This isn't a predictive model -- it's a math program. I don't know how they got that quintillion number. Could be that many "variations" instead. But the dimensions are things like time, varietals, locations, what you're gonna store/blend, that kind of thing. You end up with decision variables that are indexed in multiple dimensions and that creates the variable explosion they're alluding to. CPLEX is awesome at handling huge amounts of decision variables so long as the problem stays mixed-integer, and that's what this is.
riffraff 14y ago
I wonder, doesn't everyone of the big corp's do this? E.g. I remember an episode of some show like "how it's made" showing some big producer of pasta, where they have all this machinery to check and balance out the different qualities of incoming wheats (gluten content, minerals etc). And I assume changes in wheat are not as noticeable as those between half-ripe and half-rotten oranges.
- harshpotatoes 14y ago
  Without further details from Coke, I believe you are absolutely correct. Oranges do not have constant flavor throughout the year, and the various species of oranges which mature at different points in the season have quite different flavors. For example, in Florida, Valencia oranges rippen after decemeber for a few months, and are probably the most delicious orange you will eat. This supply of oranges is not enough to last the whole year, so most of these oranges are squeezed, pasteurized and stored for later use. The rest of the year, you might squeeze naval orange (kinda shitty orange), early-mids, or other oranges. Even worse, oranges have varying flavor throughout the season. When Valencias first come into season, most are half ripe, or half green. Maybe only for a few weeks out of the year will you get that perfect tasting orange. And god help you if those oranges are oragnic, and half of them are covered in mold. Rather than sell you an orange juice with varying flavor throughout the year, or even throughout the season, it is much less wasteful and much higher yield to blend the oranges together to produce some rather fine tasting juice. All of the companies receive these blends (and essentially the same blends), the only difference between the companies is in what they do with these blends. Some choose to produce a less bitter juice, or sweeter, or more pulp. etc. Anyways, it's not clear how their algorithm is different from this advertisement.
  - curiousDog 14y ago
    Damn that's a lot of knowledge on Oranges :-)
- willyt 14y ago
  J.Lyons and Co.[0] were doing this in 1951. LEO[1], probably the first business computer, was built to collate data from Lyons Tea Houses to calculate how many cakes to bake overnight amongst other things. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Lyons_and_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Lyons_and_Co. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer)
davidw 14y ago
I wish someone would sell Sicilian red orange juice in the US. That stuff is infinitely better than the bland crap you guys have over there. I guess for starters you'd need Sicilian red oranges in the US. https://www.google.com/search?q=spremuta+di+arance+rosse&hl=en&tbo=u&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=PncSUfP6IsiTtQbKmoHIDg&ved=0CDwQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=944 https://www.google.com/search?q=spremuta+di+arance+rosse&#38...
- brianbreslin 14y ago
  Is that the same as blood oranges they sell here in Florida? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_orange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_orange
  - davidw 14y ago
    No idea, but I never recalled seeing any when I lived in California, nor on trips home to Oregon - although admittedly I'm mostly there in the summer, which isn't when they ripen.
    - pyre 14y ago
      I've seen blood oranges in Portland. In fact, there was a particular brand of clementines from Northern California that was amazing (I forget the name, but I would recognize the box again if I saw it). If you walk into a New Seasons during the right part of the year (maybe around April/May?) there's an entire section in produce devoted to citrus, more varieties/hyrids/etc of citrus than I knew existed before I lived there.
- SeanLuke 14y ago
  Blood oranges are indeed great, and no doubt fresh squeezed blood oranges are wonderful. But I have (and still occasionally) live in Italy and have been very frustrated and annoyed with Italian OJ. I have to vehemently disagree with the notion that any kind of Italian OJ, at least as sold in grocery stores in Italy, is even remotely as good as the US kind. Italian OJ is high-temperature pasteurized, depulpified, put into tetrapak cartons, and radiated. It tastes like a mixture of the orange juice you get in plastic bottles in US vending machines, plus Tang. The blood orange version strongly brings to mind Minute Maid Fruit Punch. And it's expensive! The US OJ industry makes stuff which is far from fresh-squeezed, but it is absolutely light years ahead of European variations in taste, and I think the reason is simple: Americans drink a ton of it. It is one of the very few foods in the US which Europe simply cannot approach.
mistercow 14y ago
>Natural flavors and fragrances captured during squeezing are added back into the juice to restore flavor lost in processing. A tiny mention at the end, but this is 90% of the show. Try this: buy a half gallon of from-concentrate orange juice and a bottle of orange extract. Put a tablespoon or so of the orange extract into the half gallon of orange juice, and shake it up. Now taste it, and tell me that "not from concentrate" has much to do with anything.
bsimpson 14y ago
This is why I buy Evolution. I didn't know the reason until now, but their juice actually tastes fresh squeezed, unlike this crap.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
brianbreslin 14y ago
This is fascinating, I always thought I was a not-from-concentrate snob, now I know I've just been slightly misled all these years. OJ is pure sugar anyway, not something we should be drinking tons of.
- ErikAugust 14y ago
  I think Nassim Taleb called the idea of OJ being thought of as very healthy as a trick played on poor people.
jessaustin 14y ago
This is an interesting description even if it probably isn't completely true. It's amusing that anyone would be disappointed to learn this. Orange juice is sugar water. I don't think anyone gets worked up about how Mountain Dew is produced.
fr0sty 14y ago
There was a book written a while back about orange juice production called "Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice"[1]. The author did the talk-show circuit back then and you can find some articles and interviews here and there. [1]http://www.amazon.com/Squeezed-About-Orange-Agrarian-Studies/dp/0300164556 http://www.amazon.com/Squeezed-About-Orange-Agrarian-Studies...
deleted 14y ago
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55 points by duck 14y ago

scovetta 14y ago

I'm officially calling bullshit on the algorithm requiring "one quintillion variables".

sjwright 14y ago
Perhaps they're keeping track of each atom individually.
tantalor 14y ago
Combinatorial explosion?
unwind 14y ago
I was skeptical too, but all it takes is 60 bits, i.e. 60 "yes/no"-questions in their "black book". Doesn't sound too far-fetched. But, of course, I do hope they're not brute-forcing it. See http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=log2%28one+quintillion%29 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=log2%28one+quintillion%....
- kd5bjo 14y ago
  That's only 60 variables, which can produce a quintillion variations.
mturmon 14y ago
I think bullshit is it. The best way I could think of to generate lots of variables is a random forest classifier, which is an ensemble of (say) thousands of trees. Each tree constructs a lot of variables at each node, so maybe you'd have (stretching here) hundreds of thousands to perhaps millions of variables. But 1e6 << 1e18. Maybe they're counting each pixel of some remote sensing image of orange groves? Bullshit again, that would have to be a 1e9 x 1e9 pixel image. I'd believe it from NGA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligence_Agency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligenc...), but not from Coke. If there's a shred of truth to it, they're using some dodgy mechanism to increase the variable count.
- greatzebu 14y ago
  It seems more likely that the reporter made a mistake, and there are actually a quintillion possible internal states generated from a relatively small number of variables, not a quintillion variables.
mistermcgruff 14y ago
BlackBook is a mixed-integer programming model implemented in OPL/CPLEX (used to be an ILOG product until IBM bought them). So all this stuff about classifiers is off base. This isn't a predictive model -- it's a math program. I don't know how they got that quintillion number. Could be that many "variations" instead. But the dimensions are things like time, varietals, locations, what you're gonna store/blend, that kind of thing. You end up with decision variables that are indexed in multiple dimensions and that creates the variable explosion they're alluding to. CPLEX is awesome at handling huge amounts of decision variables so long as the problem stays mixed-integer, and that's what this is.

riffraff 14y ago

I wonder, doesn't everyone of the big corp's do this? E.g. I remember an episode of some show like "how it's made" showing some big producer of pasta, where they have all this machinery to check and balance out the different qualities of incoming wheats (gluten content, minerals etc). And I assume changes in wheat are not as noticeable as those between half-ripe and half-rotten oranges.

harshpotatoes 14y ago
Without further details from Coke, I believe you are absolutely correct. Oranges do not have constant flavor throughout the year, and the various species of oranges which mature at different points in the season have quite different flavors. For example, in Florida, Valencia oranges rippen after decemeber for a few months, and are probably the most delicious orange you will eat. This supply of oranges is not enough to last the whole year, so most of these oranges are squeezed, pasteurized and stored for later use. The rest of the year, you might squeeze naval orange (kinda shitty orange), early-mids, or other oranges. Even worse, oranges have varying flavor throughout the season. When Valencias first come into season, most are half ripe, or half green. Maybe only for a few weeks out of the year will you get that perfect tasting orange. And god help you if those oranges are oragnic, and half of them are covered in mold. Rather than sell you an orange juice with varying flavor throughout the year, or even throughout the season, it is much less wasteful and much higher yield to blend the oranges together to produce some rather fine tasting juice. All of the companies receive these blends (and essentially the same blends), the only difference between the companies is in what they do with these blends. Some choose to produce a less bitter juice, or sweeter, or more pulp. etc. Anyways, it's not clear how their algorithm is different from this advertisement.
- curiousDog 14y ago
  Damn that's a lot of knowledge on Oranges :-)
willyt 14y ago
J.Lyons and Co.[0] were doing this in 1951. LEO[1], probably the first business computer, was built to collate data from Lyons Tea Houses to calculate how many cakes to bake overnight amongst other things. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Lyons_and_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Lyons_and_Co. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer)

davidw 14y ago

I wish someone would sell Sicilian red orange juice in the US. That stuff is infinitely better than the bland crap you guys have over there. I guess for starters you'd need Sicilian red oranges in the US. https://www.google.com/search?q=spremuta+di+arance+rosse&hl=en&tbo=u&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=PncSUfP6IsiTtQbKmoHIDg&ved=0CDwQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=944 https://www.google.com/search?q=spremuta+di+arance+rosse&#38...

brianbreslin 14y ago
Is that the same as blood oranges they sell here in Florida? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_orange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_orange
- davidw 14y ago
  No idea, but I never recalled seeing any when I lived in California, nor on trips home to Oregon - although admittedly I'm mostly there in the summer, which isn't when they ripen.
  - pyre 14y ago
    I've seen blood oranges in Portland. In fact, there was a particular brand of clementines from Northern California that was amazing (I forget the name, but I would recognize the box again if I saw it). If you walk into a New Seasons during the right part of the year (maybe around April/May?) there's an entire section in produce devoted to citrus, more varieties/hyrids/etc of citrus than I knew existed before I lived there.
SeanLuke 14y ago
Blood oranges are indeed great, and no doubt fresh squeezed blood oranges are wonderful. But I have (and still occasionally) live in Italy and have been very frustrated and annoyed with Italian OJ. I have to vehemently disagree with the notion that any kind of Italian OJ, at least as sold in grocery stores in Italy, is even remotely as good as the US kind. Italian OJ is high-temperature pasteurized, depulpified, put into tetrapak cartons, and radiated. It tastes like a mixture of the orange juice you get in plastic bottles in US vending machines, plus Tang. The blood orange version strongly brings to mind Minute Maid Fruit Punch. And it's expensive! The US OJ industry makes stuff which is far from fresh-squeezed, but it is absolutely light years ahead of European variations in taste, and I think the reason is simple: Americans drink a ton of it. It is one of the very few foods in the US which Europe simply cannot approach.

mistercow 14y ago

>Natural flavors and fragrances captured during squeezing are added back into the juice to restore flavor lost in processing. A tiny mention at the end, but this is 90% of the show. Try this: buy a half gallon of from-concentrate orange juice and a bottle of orange extract. Put a tablespoon or so of the orange extract into the half gallon of orange juice, and shake it up. Now taste it, and tell me that "not from concentrate" has much to do with anything.

bsimpson 14y ago

This is why I buy Evolution. I didn't know the reason until now, but their juice actually tastes fresh squeezed, unlike this crap.

deleted 14y ago
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brianbreslin 14y ago

This is fascinating, I always thought I was a not-from-concentrate snob, now I know I've just been slightly misled all these years. OJ is pure sugar anyway, not something we should be drinking tons of.

ErikAugust 14y ago
I think Nassim Taleb called the idea of OJ being thought of as very healthy as a trick played on poor people.

jessaustin 14y ago

This is an interesting description even if it probably isn't completely true. It's amusing that anyone would be disappointed to learn this. Orange juice is sugar water. I don't think anyone gets worked up about how Mountain Dew is produced.

fr0sty 14y ago

There was a book written a while back about orange juice production called "Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice"[1]. The author did the talk-show circuit back then and you can find some articles and interviews here and there. [1]http://www.amazon.com/Squeezed-About-Orange-Agrarian-Studies/dp/0300164556 http://www.amazon.com/Squeezed-About-Orange-Agrarian-Studies...

deleted 14y ago

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