Smelling or tasting? (ii)

So, last week end I made again the oil experiment with the help of a friend. It was very funny, sort of Coca-Cola/Pepsi contests.

The Idea: as in the previous experiment, the idea/belief to test is the following:

We cannot tell the difference between the taste of olive oil and sunflower oil just tasting them (so, closing our eyes and blocking our nose).

The material: Two cups, olive oil, sunflower oil and three coins (just two are shown in the photo).



The set-up: before starting to measure, we agreed three tries each. To avoid psychological advantage (I mean, thinking about my friend's behaviour in where she/he was going to place the cups with olive oil and sunflower oil could have provided some sort of advantage where taste was not the only thing measured), a coin decided where the olive oil was going to be placed: if the coin was a head, the cup with olive oil was to be placed on another coin that was lying on the table showing its head. Otherwise, the cup with olive oil went to the coin with the tail side up (actually we were no playing heads or tails, but heads or legs, as we used Manx pounds... ok, doesn't matter).

So, how can we accept or reject the result? If we flip a Manx pound six times, we can get:

• three triskelions and three heads with probability ~31%, which comes from (6!/3!3!)*(1/2)^3*(1/2)^3 = 0.3125.
  
• four triskelions and two heads (or four heads and two triskelions) with probability ~23%, as (6!/4!2!)*(1/2)^3*(1/2)^3 = 0.234375.
  
• five triskeliions and one head (or five heads and one triskelions) with probability ~9%, result of (6!/5!1!)*(1/2)^3*(1/2)^3 = 0.09375.
  
• six triskelions (or six heads) with probability 1/64 ~ 1.6%.
  

In short, this means that we have a chance of nearly 80% to get two, three or four triskelions. So, using a rather big significance level, we will accept as true the idea if we get this, and we will reject it otherwise (which would mean that we can actually tell the difference just tasting).

The measures: So, let's start the experiment!

Here are the two subjects:



apparently two normal individuals of Homo sapiens.

	Subject A prepares before flipping the Manx pound...
	I place the olive oil where the coin tells me.
	Deciding after trying both oils.
	After opening the eyes everything seems quite different!
	After the three tries for subject A, subject B prepares to measure...
	Subject B during one of the tries.
	Subect B makes his decision.

The results: And after three tries each, we have got the results!



Which would be:

1. Wrong
   
2. Correct
   
3. Wrong
   
4. Correct
   
5. Correct
   
6. Wrong
   

Conclusion: This means we have got three wrong and three correct answers, more or less the same we would have got flipping a coin! Or, in other words, blocking our nose, we had no idea which oil we were trying, which means that, to the agreed significance level, the idea stated was correct.

Smelling or tasting?

I have seen I can summarize my philosophy about these small experiments in just one word: EMOTION, which means

• Enjoy = fun!
  
• Measurements = objectivity
  
• Observation
  
• Thought = we need a (specific) idea/belief to test
  
• Incentive = we need a motivation
  
• Originality = creativity
  
• and the four Noes:
  
  
  
  1. No great, revolutionary ideas required
     
  2. Not a lot of time required
     
  3. Not a lot of material required
     
  4. Not a lot of knowledge required
     
  
  

So, the last weeks I have been quite busy, but that's just a cheap excuse (see the second no). The real reason I was not posting anything here is not time, it is just because I am not very used to it. Accepting it is the first step. The second step is doing something about...

So I will speak about a small experiment I did some weeks ago.

I was curious about the interaction between gustation and olfaction. Everybody knows that blocking your nose it is much more difficult to detect the flavour of everything, but I wanted to check this. I chose a specific idea to test:

I can tell the difference between the taste of olive oil and sunflower oil when I block my nose

So, to do this, and to make an objective measurement, I couldn't simply block my nose and try both oils, as my mind could still make me think I can tell something, just because I know the answer. I also needed not to know which one it was.

I put in two cups a little bit of each oil. To make it completely random, I closed my eyes and I asked my girlfriend to flip a coin. Then, she had to leave the cups in a place depending on the result.

After that, I tried one of the cups while blocking my nose. It was a very strange feeling! A viscous fluid in my mouth. No taste at all. It could have been bicycle oil. But I thought I still could tell something. So I tried the second cup (still nose blocked, eyes closed, of course). This was amazing: exactly the same sensation! (It might seem obvious, but making the experiment is really interesting, as you don't have to believe in that: you feel it).

Actually you can still "cheat", as olive oil seems to be more viscous than sunflower oil. But you have to practice a bit, and I didn't. So I went out on a limb and said something. I can't remember what I said, but I was wrong.

Then I did the same, but without blocking my nose. Even before trying the oil it was completely obvious which one was the olive oil. It was as clear as telling blue from red.

It was an interesting experiment. Maybe next time I will check if it is possible, with some practice, to tell who's who by their viscosity.

Results from the first experiment

Some 12 days ago I talked about what experiments are. Obvously I was not speaking about the sort of experiments that are done in a laboratory, but about the experimenting mind. My goal is having a more experimental behaviour, to be keen to learn things by myself, and not just from books. I want to listen directly to nature, and not just to the people who read about somebody who heard about the interesting findings of somebody else who was listening to nature.

Strictly speaking, an experiment needs more things than what I said: we need a depedent variable (which we have to measure), an independent variable (which must be the only thing that changes in the experiment); the experiment has to be reproducible, and so on...

But speaking about science is not science (is philosophy), and what I like is science, so I will not care too much about the details. I want to learn the details doing the experiments.

So, in my last post, which was also the first one, I made the following statement:

This post will get no more than three different reader's comments within the next seven days

I left more than seven days and... I was completely right! Not even one post. Obviously I didn't tell anybody anything about this blog. I didn't even leave links to this blog in any other website (until one hour ago or so). Otherwise, the experiment wouldn't have been valid.

I put a counter you can see on the right hand side where the visits to this blog are shown. During the twelve days, the only visits from anywhere outside Dublin seemed to be from somewhere in Switzerland (hi there!). But he/she didn't leave any comments.

So now I can say I know something, I am not just believing in something that might be wrong: there are so many blogs around, that most of them are read only by their creators. There are some exceptions with popular blogs, but if they are popular it is because people already know them. But if you don't say anything to anybody, nobody will read the stuff (at least the first twelve days!). I am OK with that, because I am writing to myself (as most of the bloggers, probably), but it is very interesting to confirm this idea.

So, now lets do more interesting experiments...

What are experiments?

Hello world,

this is the first post of my first blog. I just would like to express how much I love understanding Nature, and the way I reach this understanding. All understanding is based on experiments. Without experiments, we would believe in things which are not true, and we wouldn't be able to predict how the Nature will react to anything.

I really enjoy doing experiments, but I don't do as many as I could, and I want to improve this. An Italian friend who lives in Finland once told me that Finnish people use to say "learn from inside" (understand) or "learn from outside" (learn by heart). I think I have been learning too many times from outside (books, other people, websites...), and now it's time to change that. I don't want to be a tourist of knowledge, but an explorer of knowledge, a creator of knowledge.

Sometimes, I think I have no time, or I convince myself that it is too complicated this or that experiment. But actually, we are surrounded by Nature. We are Nature ourselves, so... it can't be so difficult to make her a question.

So, what can I do to do more experiments, every time, everywhere? I first have to know what is an experiment, and what is not.

To do an experiment we do NOT need:

• to have great ideas (great ideas are helpful, but not at all needed: we can do the simplest experiments about every day's life, so there is no more excuses such as "I'm too tired to think [about something complicated]" or "I have no imagination"),
• a lot of time (this is not at all in the definition of experiment, an experiment can be done in a few seconds if we want),
• a lot of material (an experiment can be done in a laboratory, and some "important" experiments require such conditions that a laboratory might be the only solution, but this is not true for all the experiments, and so it is not a part of its definition. An experimental mind finds beliefs to test everywhere),
• a lot of knowledge (we can test the simplest thing we know, and doesn't matter if somebody knew that already, so here we have another excuse we will not use anymore: "I have to learn more things about the subject").
  

But we do need some things:

• an idea to test (we have to define what are we pursuing, otherwise we will never reach our target, simply because there is no target. It can be a very simple idea, but we have to know which idea is),
• creativity (if we don't try to do it differently, we always will get the same answer),
• willing to have fun (it is supposed to be interesting, isn't it?),
• observation of our environment,
• objective measurements (when we don't measure what we are studying, we have a deformed version of the world in our mind, and the longer we don't do it, the more deformed it gets),
• motivation (and this is one of the reasons if am starting this blog, because I know myself, and I know that having something to write about what I am doing boosts my motivation).

The first experiment I will do on this blog is checking something. There exist lots of blogs (on Wikipedia somebody says that something called Technorati is tracking more than 112 million blogs), so I will test this idea:

very few people will leave a comment here.
This is based on the following facts:

1. I think very few people will find this blog,
2. even if somebody finds it, the probability that somebody reads the whole post is even smaller,
3. and even if somebody reads everything, not everybody will leave a comment.

So we have a sort of Drake equation which is multiplying tiny probabilities giving an even smaller probability. Let me know if I am right or wrong.

To measure this in the most objective way I can, and make it a bit more interesting, I will make a prediction. Let's say:

This post will get no more than three different reader's comments within the next seven days
And, if I am wrong, would you tell me what is your idea of what is needed and what is not needed in an experiment?