Aerothorn on 15/11/2009 at 22:45
yes.
Scots Taffer on 15/11/2009 at 23:04
trying to do the wine one but Q9 makes no fucking sense
Al_B on 15/11/2009 at 23:28
Quote Posted by "from survey"
9. Please rate your preference for each of the following wine styles on a scale of 1-5, 1 being very weak and 5 being very strong. If you are unfamiliar with a style, please select "don't know".
[]1 []2 []3 []4 []5 []Don't know
Agreed - it must be a trick question. If you can't understand it then you definitely haven't been drinking enough wine to answer it correctly.
Scots Taffer on 15/11/2009 at 23:57
It only makes sense if there's then a list of wines with the scale 1-5 next to it...
Al_B on 16/11/2009 at 00:07
Yes, agreed. The question would have definitely been better if they had included some actual choices. I'm still not quite sure what actual options they'd have given, though. Asking people on an online forum to rate whether a particular wine style is 'very weak' or 'very strong' could do just as well with a decent random number generator.
Scots Taffer on 16/11/2009 at 00:13
Yeah, exactly - I've had a lot of watery Pinot and Shiraz that blew my head off. Neither indicates quality!
TBE on 16/11/2009 at 00:22
That was Shug, not the Shiraz. ;)
Risquit on 16/11/2009 at 05:25
No, its not spam for Vons, why would I do that? Just a coincidence that these two groups chose a marketing problem related to the grocery business. And the students are aware of the questions that don't quite work. Its a four week class and they didn't get the luxury of very much pretesting.
Anyhow, thank all of you so much for taking the time!
Risquit on 16/11/2009 at 05:27
Quote Posted by Al_B
Yes, agreed. The question would have definitely been better if they had included some actual choices. I'm still not quite sure what actual options they'd have given, though. Asking people on an online forum to rate whether a particular wine style is 'very weak' or 'very strong' could do just as well with a decent random number generator.
Funny you say that, the Wall St. Journal just reported that the ratings of all of the prominent wine critics, even Robert Parker, are just as valid as a coin toss.
ercles on 16/11/2009 at 05:54
You can say the same about any critic who is involved with a highly subjective product, it's often best to just choose a critic who highly rates products that you like, and let your choices guide them.
That said, to argue that wine ratings are as valuable as a coin toss is ridiculous, because past all the vague descriptors a fairly precise range of vocabulary has been developed by wine writers to convey wine styles with some level of precision. It's beyond obvious that wine writers are much more qualified to rate wine styles than randoms on an internet forum, their taste buds are much more keenly trained, and their understanding of how to encode their tastes in a way that others can understand is not an easy skill to come by.
As an aside, Robert Parker, along with anyone else who advocates a points/100 scheme of wine writing is a bit of a wanker.
