DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN RED WINE AND WHITE WINE. I posted previously on our family’s wine knowledge (“How big is it?”). As I recall, it was on the old television show RHODA that a character claimed to be a wine expert. The joke was that she would close her eyes and unerringly distinguish white wine from red wine. This article describes an experiment by a French researcher who presented 54 wine experts with an array of red wines for comparison which included some white wines which had been doctored with tasteless food coloring to look red. All the experts missed the white wine taste. Apparently people who know little about wine do a little better when faced with this kind of deception. Teller, the magician, says that it is easier to fool experts. Of course, all of this casts some doubts on Malcolm Gladwell’s argument in BLINK.
Categories
Archives
Recent Comments
- Gary Nuetzel on THE OLDEST FANTASY BASEBALL LEAGUE STARTS ITS 32ND SEASON. (COMMENT).
- Francesca on EATING PEAS WITH A KNIFE.
- avon wilsmore on CHEATING IN CHAMPIONSHIP BRIDGE.
- Anonymous on THE LANGUAGE WEIRDNESS INDEX.
- James Friscia on THE SECOND OLDEST FANTASY BASEBALL LEAGUE.
- Ken Babcock on THE SECOND OLDEST FANTASY BASEBALL LEAGUE.
- Lickity Splitfingers on THE SECOND OLDEST FANTASY BASEBALL LEAGUE.
- Ken Babcock on THE OLDEST FANTASY BASEBALL LEAGUE STARTS ITS 32ND SEASON. (COMMENT).
- David Quemere on THE OLDEST FANTASY BASEBALL LEAGUE STARTS ITS 32ND SEASON. (COMMENT).
- Nicholas Schaefer on THE SECOND OLDEST FANTASY BASEBALL LEAGUE.
Meta
Brad Delong posted on August 30 a reference to a summary of the paradox that shows good heuristic judgment but superiority of even crude statistical tests I don’t know how to post a cross-reference, but the paper cited can easily be found by googling “clinical and actuarial judgment compared.” One way of reconciling the two types of findings would be available if the studies finding good results from heuristics did not compare statistical approaches because statistics were not available. Note that it has to matter that reasonable statistical information is available; surely crude statistics, based perhaps on a small sample size, wouldn’t be an improvement on anything. The author of the summary delong refers to, Shalizi, says that he is unaware of studies comparing statistical and heuristic judgments to actual cases. I thought that Meehl did that.
I remember seeing an article recently (might have been from the New York Times) about how superior boxes were to bottles for preserving wine. There’s so much snobbery surrounding wine it’s a turn off–everyone who’s seen Sideways is suddenly an expert.