 What isn't a generalization that can be made from the data?
More Booze You Can Use When we last heard from them, the members of the Slate beer-testing team were coping with lagers and trying to see if they could taste the 3-to-1 price difference between the most- and least-expensive brands. The members of the team, as noted in the original article, all hold day jobs at Microsoft, mainly as designers, managers, and coders for Microsoft Word. The point of the second test was not to find the difference between cheap and expensive beers but instead to compare a variety of top-of-the-line beers. Could they detect any of the subtleties of brewing style and provenance that microbrew customers pay such attention to when choosing some Doppelbock over a cream ale? One aspect of the reward was that they would presumably enjoy the actual testing more--fewer rueful beer descriptions along the lines of "urine" or "get it away!" were expected than in the first round. The other aspect of anticipated reward was the panelists' unspoken but obvious assumption that this time they would "do better" on the test. Intellectual vanity being what it is, people who had fought for and won jobs at Microsoft and who still must fight every six months for primacy on the employee-ranking scale (which determines--gasp!--how many new stock options they receive) would assume that their skill as tasters was on trial, just as much as the beer was. Here is what happened and what it meant: 1. Procedure. This was similar in most ways to the experimental approach of Round 1. The missing three dropped out with excuses of "my wife is sick" (one person) and "meeting is running long" (two). The A-to-J labeling scheme was the same for all testers. Descriptions of and comments about each beer's taste--"smooth and nutty," "too strong," etc. If the first ranking was a measure of how good each beer was, this was an attempt to explain what made it good. They were asked to put each beer in its proper category--and to name a specific brewery and brand if they could. The idea here was to test the veteran beer drinkers' claim to recognize the distinctive tastes of famous brands. 2. Philosophy. This is in contrast with an ale, which is brewed faster, warmer, and with the yeast on top. The first test was designed to evaluate low-end beers and therefore had to be lager-centric. 3. Materials. To include both imported and domestic beers.
 if all people dislike the same beer, they're likely to all like the same beer
 the most expensive beers aren't always the best  best is very subjective  if all people dislike the same beer, they're likely to all like the same beer  people can rank the same item differently on two separate days