Projek Akhir Semester

Projek yang akan dilakukan pada akhir semester ini ialah melakukan eksperimen berdasarkan variable-
variabel yang terdaftar pada Table 1. Carilah literature yang sesuai. Anda boleh memilih satu di antara
projek-projek tersebut yang sesuai dengan bidang anda tentunya. Sila anda berandai-andai berkenaan
dengan data saudara, namun prosedur harus sesuai dengan yang digariskan bidsng ilmu and. Untuk
melaporkan projek anda sila rujuk contoh berikutnya.
Contoh Laporan

Boxed Vs. Bottled: A Wine Tasting Experiment

By

Blake Hilgemann

1. Introduction and Problem Statement

In the wine industry, there is a vast disparity in prices and perceived quality in products. Just walk into a
supermarket today and one will find a large array of choices. Not only are there choices in bottled wine,
but there are also many choices from a different package: boxed wine. Because wine as a choice of
adult beverage is often thought of as a status symbol, boxed wine has long been at the low end of the
scale.

This dynamic has brought a number of questions to mind. Does boxed wine have a noticeably different
quality than that of bottled wine? For the great difference in price that a sophisticated wine drinker
could pay for the equivalent volume of wine, is it really, in general, worth the “investment” in a
relatively expensive bottle versus a boxed wine that costs, say, a fifth of the price by volume? Is it worth
the expenditure even for an inexpensive bottle of wine versus a still less expensive box? Are there
inherent quality differences between boxed wines which sell at a higher price tag and those that are the
lowest price of all? It all boils down to this: where does the best value lie when determining whether to
buy boxed or bottled wine? Or are there good and bad wines at all price points? Can people tell the
difference between boxed and bottled wine, or is it just the method of packaging that makes it a “less
sophisticated” wine?

The subsequent screening experiment was devised to make some initial but definitive conclusions on
these matters.

2. Selection of Response Variable

Wine rating will be the response variable for this experiment. As the Wine Rating Sheet in the appendix
shows, the wine rating is composed of four categories: aroma, body, taste, and finish. Each category is
given a scale of 1-5 for simplicity, however a weight (multiplier) of one is given to aroma and body while
a weight of two is given to taste and finish. Therefore, the range on wine rating is 6-30.
3. Choice of Factors, Levels, and Range
For this experiment, three design factors and one held-constant factor were chosen. One allowed-to-
vary factor and four nuisance factors were identified. The factors are broken down as follows:

Design factors

Type of grape – cabernet and merlot

Type of packaging – boxed and bottled

Price range – “low” (under $5/750mL) and “high” ($12-$20/750mL)

Held-constant factors

Growing region – California, USA

Allowed-to-vary factors

The wines may come from separate distributors, which allows for different storage procedures.
This is assumed to have negligible impact on the outcome of this experiment.

Nuisance factors

Year – year can have a great effect on wine quality, but it is assumed that using year as a design
factor will make the samples (boxes/bottles) rather hard acquire for this experiment.

Winery – though all wines will come from California, they will be grown by different wineries.
Again, this could affect wine quality, but we are looking at price as a factor, and price is assumed
to be an indicator of quality. It may be a hypothesis for further experimentation that one should
not be worried about price, but rather by the wine’s maker (or instead by the year and region it
was grown).

Time – because the experiment will be a taste test, a taster’s opinion of wine may change
(positively or negatively) as the test goes on. Time correlates with the amount of alcohol the
taster has consumed, so it will not be considered a separate factor.

Tasters – ratings from individual tasters is potentially an extremely large source of variation.
Obviously, each taster much be treated as an individual block, and a replicate of all factor
combinations must be evaluated by each taster to account for this variability.
4. Choice of Experimental Design
In this wine tasting experiment, there are 3 factors with 2 levels each. Therefore, a 23 factorial design is
well-suited. There must be 8 runs per replication. Additionally, there are two nuisance variables that
must be blocked: individual tasters and drink order (i.e. time). These two randomization restrictions call
for a Latin Square design. Therefore, I will run an 8 x 8 Latin Square.

To visualize the design, I have assigned low and high levels to each factor below.

Package: (-) Box, (+) Bottle

Price: (-) Low, (+) High

Type: (-) Cabernet Sauvignon, (-) Merlot

Then the coded treatment combinations follow a binary pattern:

0: --- (Box, Low, Cab)

1: --+ (Box, Low, Merlot)

2: -+- (Box, High, Cab)

3: -++ (Box, High, Merlot)

4: +--

5: +-+

6: ++-

7: +++

Now a Latin Square table can be created to ensure randomization. Table 4-1 is the random Latin Square
chosen for the experiment. Blocking is performed for drink order and each taster to minimize these
nuisance factors.

Drink Taster
Order 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 7 5 3 4 2 0 1 6
2 5 4 1 6 0 2 7 3
3 3 7 6 0 5 1 2 4
4 1 3 2 5 4 6 0 7
5 6 1 0 7 3 4 5 2
 6 0 2 7 1 6 3 4 5
7 2 0 4 3 7 5 6 1
8 4 6 5 2 1 7 3 0
Table 4-1: 8x8 Latin Square design showing treatment combinations for each taster and drink order

Finally, notice that the binary treatment combinations are ordered. That is, the first 4 numbers are the
boxes, and the last 2 numbers are the highest priced bottles. In an attempt to eliminate the possibility
of a taster’s conscious or unconscious association of a numbered wine with a certain rating (e.g. wine #7
must be the highest rated wine), I randomly assigned a planet’s name to each of the combinations.
These codes were only used for the purposes of the rating sheet that each taster received, and were
used to eliminate bias during the blind taste test. This coding is shown in Table 4-2 on the following
page. I have also included a column that gives the actual wines chosen for each treatment combination.
 Table 4-2: Planet code structure and wines chosen for each treatment combination

5. Carrying Out the Experiment

The experiment was performed on April 24, 2009 in Sedona, AZ. Eight wine enthusiasts were selected,
including my in-laws and six of their friends (some of whom have been drinking wine for decades longer
than I have been alive). To give an idea of the taster’s experience level with wine and hopefully the
development of their palates as well, two simple questions were asked of them:
  What is the average price (retail) of a bottle of wine that you drink?
 About how much do you spend on wine annually (retail)?

The mean answer for the first question was $17.20 with a range of $7-$30. The mean answer for the
second question was $706 with a range of $250-$1200. This at least proved to me that my tasting group
consisted of mostly those who knew their way around wine, although the range in answers suggests a
variety of tastes in wine.

Each round of one ounce samples was served simultaneously, and the sampling glasses were cleared of
residue by rinsing with water between samples. Wine crackers were used between rounds to cleanse
the palate, and each taster had a glass of drinking water. The wines were served from pitchers marked
only with the planet’s name they were coded with. Because of the nature of the Latin Square, each
round consisted of one sample of each factor combination. This proved to be tedious, but was
necessary to collect the best set of data possible.

6. Results of Statistical Analysis

The wine scores are shown in the Table 6-1 below.

Wine Taster
Type 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
0 13 8 12 21 7 14 12 15
1 14 11 12 11 12 9 14 11
2 9 16 13 13 22 16 18 17
3 17 13 19 15 12 14 13 15
4 7 9 15 9 8 8 16 6
5 8 27 15 18 10 14 9 18
6 23 27 20 15 20 11 22 27
7 10 26 21 18 18 16 25 6
Table 6-1: Wine rating for each taster and treatment combination

On first glance, there appears to be a wide variance in taste for some wines. JMP analysis shows,
however, that a meaningful conclusion can still be made.

I have included all of the two-factor and three-factor interactions as well as the two blocking factors in
the model that will be fit to the data. This was set up using the Custom Design option in JMP, and can
be seen in Figure 6-1.
 Figure 6-1: JMP effects modeled

The JMP output is as follows. With an R2 of just 0.53, the actual by predicted plot and the Summary of
Fit (Figure 6-2 and Table 6-2) attest to the large variance in data.
 Figure 6-2: Actual vs. Predicted plot

Table 6-2: Summary of fit for the given model

The ANOVA and model parameter estimates, given in Tables 6-3 through 6-5, conclude that there is high
significance in only one parameter: price. Package type was only significant at the 8% level, and the type
of wine had no significance. None of the interaction terms were significant, although the price-type and
package-price-type interactions were significant at 8% and 6% levels respectively. Interestingly, the
block effects for Tasters and Drink Order (time) were insignificant. The effect of the first drink, however,
was nearly significant at the 5% level suggesting that blocking was still worthwhile.
Tables 6-3 and 6-4: ANOVA and Parameter Estimates

Table 6-5: ANOVA breakdown

The two-factor interaction plots are shown in Figure 6-3 below. Again, the price-type interaction shows
low significance, but there is some cross-over there.

Figure 6-3: Two-factor interaction profiles

Finally, the residuals were analyzed to ensure that the assumptions made in the ANOVA model were
sufficiently validated. Figure 6-4 gives the JMP residuals vs. fitted values. The normal probability plot of
residuals and the residuals vs. drink order, taster, and treatment combination were calculated and
plotted in Excel and are shown in Figures 6-5 through 6-8. None of these plots show abnormality, so the
model assumptions have been validated and no data transformation is necessary.
 Figure 6-4: Residual vs. predicted values

Normal Probability Plot of Residuals

100

90

80

70
Normal Probability

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
-10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10
Residual
 Figure 6-5: Normal probability plot of residuals

Residuals vs Taster (block)

10

2
Residual

-2

-4

-6

-8

-10
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Taster Number

Figure 6-6: Residuals vs. Tasters

 Residuals vs Drink Order (block)

10

2
Residual

-2

-4

-6

-8

-10
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Drink Number

Figure 6-7: Residuals vs. Drink Order

Residuals vs Treatment Combination

10

2
Residual

-2

-4

-6

-8

-10
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Wine Combination

Figure 6-8: Residuals vs. Treatment Combination

7. Conclusions
This experiment has answered some of the questions posed in the problem statement (section 1). Being
a screening experiment, however, it has led to many other possibilities for optimization and follow-up
testing. It has identified that there is no great significance between the packaging of a wine, so
something can be said for buying boxed wines these days. There are definitely “drinkable” boxed wines
out there. On the other hand, a higher priced wine could be worth the expense; whether it is a higher
priced box or a higher priced bottle of wine. The type of wine was not at all an issue in this experiment.
These conclusions could allow a factor or two to be dropped in further experimentation.

Although there was no significant interaction among the factors, the interaction profiles actually provide
a little more insight into the results. Figure 7-1 below is a copy of Figure 6-3. The left-center plot shows
that the low priced boxed and bottled wines had practically equal ratings and the high priced bottled
wine had greater ratings than the high priced boxed wine. This could lead to further experimentation
and optimization to understand precisely where the value lies since the high priced bottle still cost more
by volume than the high priced box.
 Figure 7-1: Two-factor interaction profiles

Another observation from Figure 7-1 comes from the bottom-center plot. This plot shows that low
priced cabs may be worse than high priced cabs while the difference may be less significant in the case
of merlots. This could again lead to further experimentation to determine whether cab drinkers must
spend more money than merlot drinkers to get good value for their wine. It has been said that good
cabs are more difficult to make than good merlots, which gives this observation some intuitive appeal.

The main takeaway from this experiment, unfortunately, is that a good wine does in general come with
a higher price tag. But do not give up hope because there is always a chance for a “diamond in the
rough” since this experiment was run with a very limited subset of the available wines on the market.
Obviously, there are bargain wines out there; and there is not a linear relationship between the price
you pay for wine and its total quality. This leads to the final idea for experimentation brought about by
my analysis: For a given price point, how great is the range in quality? This experiment would be run
with wine as a random factor so that wines could be randomly sampled rather than requiring a test
involving the entire population of wines.
 Wine Scoring Sheet 1

What is the average price (retail) of a bottle of wine that you drink? $_____

About how much do you spend on wine annually (retail)? $_____________