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From: rbg@cbosgd.UUCP (Richard Goldschmidt)
Newsgroups: net.followup,net.wines
Subject: Old Coke loses blind tasting
Message-ID: <1207@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 29-May-85 07:45:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.1207
Posted: Wed May 29 07:45:45 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 30-May-85 20:25:22 EDT
Organization: Columbus Bell Labs, Silver Lining
Lines: 32
Xref: watmath net.followup:4925 net.wines:484

We used a Memorial Day picnic as an excuse for a scientifically controlled, 
blind cola tasting.  Zeke Haley and I put it together with suggestions for 
experimental design from Bob Warren.

We had eleven subjects who each compared five unidentified colas against a 
standard unidentified cola.  Each of the five was rated with respect to
the standard as much better, better, the same, worse or much worse.
The votes were scored as +2, +1, 0, -1 and -2 respectively, and summed
for each of the 5 test colas.  As a control, the standard cola was
also included as one of the test colas.

New Coke was used as the standard.  The results were quite interesting:

Pepsi           New Coke        Old Coke        Diet Pepsi      Diet Coke

 -5               +4              -10              -1              -2

We drew two general conclusions from this study.  Old Coke was much less 
preferred than New Coke.  Only two people out of eleven rated it as better or
much better than New Coke, and one thought it was the same.  Other than that, 
people couldn't reliably tell the difference between the other colas.  The 
margin of taster error was indicated by the score for New Coke of +4.  Pepsi
was just at the threshold of taster error with a score of -5, while the two
diet colas were clearly indistinguishable from the standard.

The bottom line is Old Coke loses big.

Note: Zeke and I both prefer different versions of Diet Coke, so we weren't
      biased towards New or Old Coke, and we didn't vote.
-- 
Rich Goldschmidt     {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax,allegra,seismo} !cbosgd!rbg
		     ARPA:  cbosgd!rbg@seismo or cbosgd!rbg@ucbvax