"The Lady Tasting Tea" Post 1

When I first saw the book that I'd be reading for the next Perspectives unit, I was skeptical to say the least. I wasn't quite sure at first what someone drinking tea had to do with being a mathematician. And, I've never even heard of a book written about math other than a textbook. After reading three chapters, I have many thoughts on the book already.

The book started out explaining the situation of the lady that tasted tea which I was glad of because I didn't want to have to wonder about that till way later in the book when it could've come up. Most books don't have anything about the title until the end of the book. Anyway, there was a lady in Britain a long time ago that was hanging out with a bunch of scientists at a tea party one day when she brought up that the tea tasted different if it was poured into the milk or if the milk was poured into the tea. My first thought was, "Why does it even matter?? Just drink the tea, lady!" I continued reading and found out that an experiment was set up with this tea situation and very detailed mathematical formulas were used to find the probability distribution of the problem. Scientists argued over whether the distribution was accurate enough blah blah blah. The normal scientist drama.

Salsburg, the author of The Lady Tasting Tea includes many names of scientists from long ago. It's very confusing to try to keep track of them all.

Another thing that bothered me initially about the book is the picture on the cover:

It seems very random. Is it a picture of the lady that tasted tea and started controversy for many years? Is it a famous mathematician or scientist? I hope I find out eventually.

Although I have several concerns for this book, they seem small because I find David Salsburg to have quite an interesting outlook on people's view of statistics. I'm looking forward to reading about the real world applications that he promised in the preface would be forthcoming farther into the book.