Not Even the Slightest Soupçon of Correlation

3 September 2009 at 9:30 am Dick Langlois 2 comments

| Dick Langlois |

Another interesting article from the Journal of Wine Economics:

The lead article is again by Robert T. Hodgson, who analyzes the reliability of Gold medals awarded at 13 California Wine Fairs. “An analysis of over 4000 wines entered in 13 U.S. wine competitions shows little concordance among the venues in awarding Gold medals. Of the 2,440 wines entered in more than three competitions, 47 percent received Gold medals, but 84 percent of these same wines also received no award in another competition. Thus, many wines that are viewed as extraordinarily good at some competitions are viewed as below average at others. An analysis of the number of Gold medals received in multiple competitions indicates that the probability of winning a Gold medal at one competition is stochastically independent of the probability of receiving a Gold at another competition, indicating that winning a Gold medal is greatly influenced by chance alone.” The full article can be accessed free of charge at Abstract Full Text (PDF).

Entry filed under: - Langlois -, Ephemera, Food and Agriculture, Myths and Realities.

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2 Comments Add your own

1. REW | 3 September 2009 at 3:41 pm

What does a Bayesian think of this phenomenon? Are priors weak or ill-formed? Is it a story of poor inference, independence of observations, or that half-bombed wine tasting judges cannot produce repeatable outcomes?
2. Dry, with hints of stone fruit, and a subtle aftertaste of the null hypothesis « Code and Culture | 3 September 2009 at 7:16 pm

[…] September 3, 2009 The number of gold medals won by different wines at competition follows a binomial but you’d expect this under the null. In fact, it appears that wins are totally random and the various competitions are not indicators loading on a latent “quality” variable. I’m trying to figure out if this makes me take Benjamin and Podolny more or less seriously. I’m thinking more, since if quality isn’t an issue that pretty much eliminates any question about spuriousness. In related news, The New Yorker had an interesting article about two buck chuck a few months ago. via O&M […]