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SDF1
Super User

DOE to test taster's ability to predict color of candy (for kids)

Dear JMP & Community,

 

  During this time of being stuck at home with kids and working on school projects, I thought of running a "taste test" with my son who recently claimed that he could tell the color of a chocolate candy based on the color of the candy shell (it's a candy similar to that of M&M).

 

  I'm not entirely sure how to set up the DOE because it doesn't quite fall under Choice or MaxDiff Designs, or the Covering Array or Nonlinear DOE. It's not quite the same as the potato chip smackdown blog or the chocolate smackdown blogs here and here.

 

  I simply want to test whether or not my son can truly (in a blind and randomized trial of the candies) taste the flavor of the coloring and predict it correctly.

 

  At present, I've only come to the following idea of using the Custom DOE with one X1 factor: Actual Color, and the response being Predicted Color: 1 if predicted correctly, 0 otherwise. Then, by looking at the distribution of the response column, and looking at the Proportion Zero and Proportion Nonzero, we could get an idea of how often he was right vs. wrong.

 

  That's pretty easy, and straightforward, but I think it might be interesting to instead somehow record the response and analyze the DOE in such a way that we could see if he actually is able to taste the difference in certain colors, say always getting the Blue and Purple correct, maybe sometimes with Green, but never with Purple.

 

  At first, this whole project sounded easy, but the more I think about how to design and analyze it for learning more valuable information (than just whether he's right or wrong), the more I see it's complicated, at least to me. It's not so straightforward to me on how to set it up to get some really interesting information.

 

  If anyone has some suggestions, I appreciate your feedback!

 

Thanks,

DS

11 REPLIES 11
P_Bartell
Level VIII

Re: DOE to test taster's ability to predict color of candy (for kids)

As always, @Mark_Bailey and @statman offer some valuable insights. One thought for your choice of family of experimental designs is a balanced incomplete block design. During my tenure as a senior systems engineer with the JMP division of SAS, I worked with multiple companies that have what they call 'sensory panels' that conduct similar types of empirical investigations for cosmetics, food, spices, and such. These panelists are highly trained to evaluate and provide sensory data (numeric and text) usually as part of the company's R & D and new product development efforts. The balanced incomplete block design was a cornerstone 'go to' type design for much of their work. Might be 'overkill' for your situation...but worth a look? Here's a link to the family of designs in the online JMP documentation:

 

https://www.jmp.com/support/help/en/15.1/#page/jmp/balanced-incomplete-block-designs.shtml#

 

SDF1
Super User

Re: DOE to test taster's ability to predict color of candy (for kids)

Hi @P_Bartell,

 

  Thanks for the feedback and link to BIBDs. I had read a little about those before as well. However, when trying out different designs within that platform, I couldn't quite get the type of design I was thinking of like I could with the Custom DOE. Perhaps it's because I'm just not very familiar with the BIBDs. We might try that at a later date and under a different design.

 

  I ended up going with a Custom DOE that has four levels for the colors, two participants (me and my son), and then two "cleaning" methods in-between samples (taking a drink of water or smelling coffee grounds). I think it'll be fun to do with him, and my wife is going to be the moderator and taking down the responses.

 

  I'll be sure to update the discussion with how things went. I really appreciate everyone's feedback and thoughts on this.

 

Thanks!,

DS