Intensive Computational Method Applied for Assessing Specialty Coffees by Trained and Untrained Consumers

Abstract

The sensory analysis of coffees assumes that a sensory panel is formed by tasters trained according to the recommendations of the American Specialty Coffee Association. However, the choice that routinely determines the preference of a coffee is made through experimentation with consumers, in which, for the most part, they have no specific ability in relation to sensory characteristics. Considering that untrained consumers or those with basic knowledge regarding the quality of specialty coffees have little ability to discriminate between different sensory attributes, it is reasonable to admit the highest score given by a taster. Given this fact, probabilistic studies considering appropriate probability distributions are necessary. To access the uncertainty inherent in the notes given by the tasters, resampling methods such as Monte Carlo’s can be considered and when there is no knowledge about the distribution of a given statistic, p-Bootstrap confidence intervals become a viable alternative. This text will bring considerations about the use of the non-parametric resampling method by Bootstrap with application in sensory analysis, using probability distributions related to the maximum scores of tasters and accessing the most frequent region (mode) through computational resampling methods.