Archive for August, 2023
Experimenting to make spirits more enticing
Posted by mark in food science on August 15, 2023
Spirits are distilled alcoholic drinks that typically contain 40% alcohol by volume (ABV) or 80 “proof”. Until the Pandemic, I avoided spirits—preferring to imbibe less intoxicating beers and wines. However, during the Quarantine, I made it my mission to drink up a stock of tequila that my Mexican exchange student’s father Pepe sent me when his daughter told him about the terrible cold in Minnesota.
Down the hatch went Don Julio and the like over some months…and yet the quarantine dragged on. Tiring of tequila I pivoted to bourbon, starting with top-shelf Woodford Reserve and settling after serial pairwise testing on bottom-shelf Evan Williams. Why pay more when you cannot discern a difference?
Last week my research on spirits expanded to rye whiskey purchased after a tour of the Chattanooga Whiskey Experimental Distillery. See my guide Sam pictured with a measurement guide for a key variable—the degree of charring in the storage barrels.
The mash bill for my bottle is malted rye, yellow corn, caramel malted rye (providing a smoother taste) and chocolate malted rye (not sure what that is, but it sounds tasty).
It seems to me that multifactor design of experiments would be an ideal tool for contending with the many process, mixture and categorical inputs to the optimization of whiskey. Once upon a time I toured Dewars Aberfeldy distillery in central Scotland. It concluded with my first taste of whiskey—shockingly strong. However, what interested me most was a simulator that allowed visitors to vary inputs and see how the output rated for taste. Unfortunately, I only had time to do one factor at a time (OFAT) testing and desperate stabs at changing multiple inputs.
If the spirit moves you (pun intended), please contact me for help designing your experiments and tasting the results.
Diabolical werewolves test trust in team
Posted by mark in Communication, leadership on August 1, 2023
Tonight, there’s a full moon. Then on August 30 comes the second full one of the month—a rare blue moon. Thus, it’s especially appropriate to consider werewolves and, in particular, an online game where these lycanthropes (secretly designated) undermine trust and security within a group.
I played Werewolf a few times but never got very far due to the cutthroat “kill the newbie” strategy deployed by more experienced (and vicious!) players. My interest in the Werewolf game stems from it providing a good laboratory for studying social dynamics and teamwork. See, for example, this blog by a relationship expert about What Werewolf teaches us about Trust & Security. For scientists studying such interactions, the Idiap Wolf Corpus (sounds creepy!) offers a wealth of data in the form of audio-visual recordings of 15 games played by 4 groups of people.
A newly published study by a trio of industrial engineers* delves into the impact of playing Werewolf at a distance and what this revealed about teamwork when members participate only on a virtual basis. The researchers divided 30 students into 3 teams of ten comprised of two werewolves, seven villagers, and one seer. Their experiment varied the groups by leadership experience.
The sample size of this study was far too small to support any conclusions, in my opinion. I just thought it would be fun to put teams, such as a group of researchers tasked with developing a new product, to the test of Werewolf.
Devious!
Cue the howls as the full moon rises…
PS I do wonder how well teams do at a distance versus in person. My feeling based on a lot of experience as a chemical engineer leading plant-process-improvement projects is that it pays to get together in one room every several meetings. It would be interesting to see well-designed research on all virtual, all in-person or a mix of the two.
*Vera Setyanitami, Hilya Mudrika Arini and Nurul Lathifah, People’s Trust in a Virtual Project Team: Results of a Game Experiment, Jurnal Teknik Industri, Vol. 25, No. 1, June 2023.