Lady tasting tea

[lr4444lr]

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...

[TheOtherHobbes]

I'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.

[BinRoo]

That 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.

[perilunar]

> detectable trace of caramelization

I was alway told the milk-last 'scalds' the milk, and I do prefer the taste of milk-first, especially with the first pour of the pot.

If making teabag tea, it's better to let the tea brew (and cool) for a few minutes before adding milk. Adding the milk just after the water gives a terrible cup.

[lisper]

Why wouldn’t the same thing happen when the milk first hits the tea?

Id anything I would think there should be more caramelization in the TBM case because there should be more heat in the larger volume of tea and so the milk should get hotter at the point of initial contact.

[mmh0000]

Of 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

[ahazred8ta]

producing "a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea" - h2g2

[LeonB]

I 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

[rahulnair23]

The ISO link[1] says this standard has been withdrawn however.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

[zug_zug]

> 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).

[aidenn0]

Also, you need to consider your prior probabilities. If you performed an experiment that showed, 0.001<p<.05 that the sun has spontaneously stopped undergoing fusion, I wouldn't be very worried.

[sjmcmahon]

This 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.

[af3d]

The 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.

[m463]

> in the actual experiment the lady succeeded in identifying all eight cups correctly.

:)

[jitl]

Men: inventing new statistics methods to prove a lady wrong

Lady: is right

[jibbit]

> 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?

[Horffupolde]

That’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.

[throwaway984393]

Good 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.

[zug_zug]

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).

[YZF]

I'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.

[bikenaga]

And "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)]

[codeulike]

George Orwell has entered the chat

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]

Right, 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.

[westcort]

Not 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

[stavros]

> The woman in question, phycologist Muriel Bristol, claimed to be able to tell whether the tea or the milk was added first to a cup.

[teddyh]

The 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”.

[xandrius]

To 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.

[Sander_Marechal]

My 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.

[Loughla]

Jesus Christ I hope you're joking with the brewing tea in milk.

That's terrifying.

[telesilla]

I 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.

[ngcc_hk]

Always tell this story how today stat evolve out from experimental design and becomes non-baynesian

[nabaraz]

Very interesting. What are some other hypothesis, provoking random articles?

[playingalong]

Berry. I hate tea with milk.

[jitl]

In 1935?

[chrsw]

I heard about this recently but I can't remember where. Was the topic of this tea test on a podcast or something recently?

[taejo]

There was a post here about it, a couple months ago, I think