let's say that you have 'students' (they love pizza you know!) who claim they can easily tell the difference between brands of pizza (pizza hut, dominoes, etc.) ... so, you put them up to the challenge you select 10 students at random ... and, arrange a taste test as follows: you have some piping hot pizzas ... from dominoes and pizza hut ... and, you cut slices of each (pepperoni and green peppers in all cases) .... and, when each student comes in ... you randomly pick 2 slices from one of the two brands ... and 1 from the other brand ... and lay them out in front of the student in a random order and ask the student to taste test ... then tell you which two of the 3 are the same ... and which 1 of the 3 is different ... of course, they have to try all 3 ... and, probably go back and forth retasting more than once before making their final decision ... now, we have 10 trials in terms of students doing independent tests, one from the other ... in each of these 10 cases ... if the identification of the 3 is correct ... you count this as a successful identification ... if there are any misplacements or misidentifications ... then we label this as a failure ... say we have pizza 1, 2, and 3 ... and the only allowable options are: 12 same, 3 different 13 same, 2 different 23 same, 1 different that is, the instructions are such that they are told ... 2 ARE the same ... and, 1 IS different so, saying all are the same ... or all are different ... are not options that you allow for the taster so, in this scenario, there are 10 independent trials ... but, what is really the p for success? q for failure? is this situation of n=10 ... really a true binomial case where p for success is 1/3 under the assumption that simple guessing were the way in which tasters made their decisions? (as an aside, what would it mean for tasters in this situation to be making their decisions purely based on chance?) _________________________________________________________ dennis roberts, educational psychology, penn state university 208 cedar, AC 8148632401, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
