Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T21:49:32.926Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Note on a Test for the Sum of Ranksums*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2012

Richard E. Quandt
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Princeton University, Princeton NY08540, email:metrics@quandt.com.

Abstract

In wine tastings, in which several tasters (judges) taste several wines, it is important to insure objectivity to the extent possible. This is usually accomplished by holding the tasting “blind,” i.e., covering the bottles so that the tasters do not know which wine is in which bottle. At some agreed upon point in the proceedings, the tasters reveal what they think about the various bottles. Ideally, this revelation would take place by secret ballot, lest a taster's choices be influenced by what he or she hears another taster say. But in any event, there are two standard ways of rating the wines. The older method is to assign them “grades” on a scale of, say, up to 100 points (Parker) or up to 20 points as in the famous face-off between California wines and French Bordeaux wines in 1976 (see Ashenfelter et al., 2007). As Ashenfelter at al. point out, this has the distinct disadvantage that a judge with greater dispersion in his or her grades will have a greater influence on the average score that each wine achieves.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Association of Wine Economists 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ashenfelter, O., Quandt, R.E., and Taber, G. (2007). Wine tasting epiphany: an analysis of the 1976 California vs. France tasting. In Allhoff, F. (ed.), Wine and Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. forthcoming.Google Scholar
Kramer, A. (1956). A quick rank test for significance in multiple comparisons. Food Technology, 10, 391392.Google Scholar
Quandt, R.E. (2006). Measurement and inference in wine tasting. Journal of Wine Economics, 1, 730.CrossRefGoogle Scholar