On 12-Jun-06 Vernon Gayle wrote:
> Dear Colleagues,
> 
> This is purely for personal interest.
> 
> I have just received a copy of 'The Lady Tasting Tea - How
> Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century'
> by David Salsburg.
> 
> I noticed on page 1 that he suggests that the famous tea
> tasting experiment associated with Ronald Fisher took place
> in Cambridge. 
> 
> However, in 'Intro to Categorical Data Analysis' (1996) Alan
> Agresti reports that it was at Rothampsted.
> 
> If someone has a copy of 1935 edition of Fishers 'The Design
> of Experiments' please could they have a look for me - Salsburg
> suggests that the story is in chapter 2.
> 
> Many thanks
> 
> Vernon 

I was going to say that I don't know about the facts of the
tea-tasting experiment, but I know a man who undoubtedly does
(Anthony Edwards).

But then I turned to my copy of

  "R.A. Fisher: The Lide of a Scientist"

by Joan Fisher Box (his daughter). On page 134 is the following
account:

  "Already, quite soon after he had come to Rothamsted [he
   joined the staff in October 1919], his presence had transformed
   one commonplace tea time to an historic event. It happened
   one afternoon when he drew a cup of tea from the urn and
   offered it to the lady beside him, Dr B. Muriel Bristol,
   an algologist. She declined it, stating that she preferred
   a cup into which the milk had been poured first. "Nonsense",
   returned Fisher, smiling. "Surely it makes no difference."
   But she maintained, with emphasis. that of course it did.
   From just behind, a voice suggested, "Let's test her."
   It was William Roach, who was not long afterward to marry
   Miss Bristol. Immediately, they embarked on the preliminaries
   of the experiment, Roach assisting with the cups and exulting
   that Miss Bristol divined correctly more than enough of those
   cups into which the tea had been poured first to prove her case."

There are a few more paragraphs developing this event into the
permanent thread it became in Fisher's thought, leading on to
the opening of Chapter II of "The Design of Experiments (1935):

     "'A lady declares that by tasting a cup of tea made
       with milk she can discriminate whether the milk or
       the tea infusion was first added to the cup. We shall
       consider the problem of designing an experiment by
       means of which this assertion can be tested.'

  "In the subsequent pages he considered the questions relevant to
   designing this particular test as a prime example, for the same
   questions arise, in some form, in all experimental designs."

One could hardly get closer to the horse's mouth than that, nor
have more delightful cirumstantial detail, so it would be ungallant
to doubt any part of it!

My one remaining question about the whole thing: In the circumstances
of the original event, did everone eventually get a cup of tea?
Or was the urn exhausted by the demand for experimental resources?

Best wishes to all,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[log in to unmask]>
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Date: 12-Jun-06                                       Time: 20:16:27
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