When I was a Google SRE, during one trip to Zurich I complained that I hated the lack of my standard vice, Diet Coke, in Europe (they have "Coke Light" instead). My boss didn't believe me that I could tell the difference... so he brought some back to the States and we ran a blind test. (I think we also added Pepsi and some other things.) My recollection is that I got every sample correct, but we definitely didn't have that many! I wonder what the probability of a false positive was in that case. (I no longer drink Diet Coke, but I still maintain that Coke Light -- and Coke Zero which I believe to be the same formula -- is gross.)
> I no longer drink Diet Coke, but I still maintain that Coke Light -- and Coke Zero which I believe to be the same formula -- is gross.
Here, we have Coke Light, and Coke No Sugar (formerly known as Zero). Coke Light probably tastes similar to Diet Coke, while Coke No Sugar has sucralose instead of aspartame to make it taste closer to regular sugar/HFCS Coke.
Coke No Sugar and Coke Zero are different formulas, at least in Australia. It was a big enough deal that major supermarkets refused to carry Coke No Sugar when it launched here next to Zero [1], and Dominos Pizza switched their contract from Coke to Pepsi over it. [2]
Personally I was a fan & regular drinker of Coke Zero. But I tried Coke No Sugar & didn't like it as much, and I switched all my spending to Pepsi Max once Coke Zero was discontinued. Interestingly, in Australia, Pepsi Max is owned by Asahi and is the #1 diet cola, even above the Coca-Cola brands.
It seems “No Sugar” (which I just heard of for the first time) is supposed to replace Zero but it’s not quite the same. (Anyway, even the “same” type of Coke is not the same across markets and if I remember correctly the Zero brand has been used for quite different products).
Edit: in which market do you say sucralose being used in “no sugar” coke? I can’t find any reference other than to “diet coke with splenda” (a brand of sucralose, which is used in combination with aspartame in that “diet” coke).
I used to remember aspartame being present in Coke Zero, so Coke No Sugar (which seems to be marketed interchangeably as Coke Zero Sugar in this case) could actually be a new formula.
The zero brand seems to have been retired, and both "no sugar" and "light" use sucralose + acesulfame-K as sweetener (that's also the case for the US "diet coke with splenda” I mentioned, I mistakenly said it contains aspartame).
It seems, however, that in other countries both "no sugar" and "diet" contain aspartame + acesulfame-K (and cyclamate in some cases, but it's forbidden in some countries).
Reading the title of this article, I immediately thought of William S. Gosset, "The Guinness Brewer Who Revolutionized Statistics", earlier in the century. I am sure there are even older examples.
Just to work out the odds, it's not 2^-8 since she knew there were four of each type of tea. 1 in 70 = 8 choose 4, which one can mental math as 8!/(4!4!) = 8765/4! = (8/(42))7(6/3)5*1 = 70.
According to the story she chose after each cup, not at the end (so it's harder for her to make use of the 4-4 information); therefore, the odds calculation is not so straightforward right?
I was thinking the same thing! I think those would be her odds if she were permitted to go back and change her mind about which cups of tea had milk first. If she said the first 4 cups were milk first with some confidence, but on the fifth cup was absolutely certain it was milk first, she would have to go back and change a previous evaluation (because she knows there can be only 4). But because they were presented one at a time, and Bristol made her determination up front. It's basically a series of independent Bernoulli trials (i.e. Binomial distribution). So, assuming she had a 50% chance of guessing correctly, the probability would be (8 choose 4) * (1/2)^8.
