Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer, Diapers and Correlation

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This is only marginally about beer, but since I’m often reading over data, statistics and scientific reports, notions of causation and correlation have become a subject of great interest. This is a Slideshare by Mark Madson, a research analyst with Third Nature in Portland, Oregon. Apparently in schools teaching business, marketing and the like, instructors often include a tale showing a correlation between the sales of beer and diapers, to illustrate thinking in new ways and how seemingly unrelated items might be connected, or could be connected by a savvy company. Having worked retail for many years during various stages of my life, the science of getting a customer’s attention through shelf placement, cross-merchandising and other strategies I find fascinating, in part because it’s a window into human nature itself. In his presentation, Beer, Diapers, and Correlation: A Tale of Ambiguity, Madson examines the oft-related story of a correlation between beer and diapers and tries to find out its origin and whether or not it’s actually true.

The story of the correlation between beer and diaper sales is commonly used to explain product affinities in introductory data mining courses. Rarely does anyone ask about the origin of this story. Is it true? Why is it true? What does true mean anyway?

The latter question is the most interesting because it challenges the ideas of accuracy in data and analytic models.

This is the real history of the beer and diapers story, explaining its origins and truth, based on repeated analyses of retail data over two decades. It will show that one can have multiple contradictory results from analytic models, and how they can all be true.

Patent No. 460291A: Apparatus For Heating And Pitching Barrels

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Today in 1891, US Patent 460291 A was issued, an invention of Friedeich Jung, for his “Apparatus for Heating and Pitching Barrels.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes these claims:

The object of my invention, as described below, is to burn out beer-barrels with a direct flame and to remove the danger of explosions, which are still of frequent occurrence in pitching barrels. It is a notorious fact that the latter far more frequently occurs especially when barrels are pitched by the application of hot air or steam than when an open flame or direct fire is employed. The explosive gases are generated and the explosion is produced generally on account of a want of atmospheric air in the barrel.

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Patent No. 5248062A: Beer Keg Tap Apparatus

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Today in 1993, US Patent 5248062 A was issued, an invention of Vincent G. Hillard, for his “Beer Keg Tap Apparatus.” Here’s the Abstract:

A tap member is arranged with a threaded lid directed into engagement with an upper end of the tap structure configured as a cylindrical housing, including a cavity receiving a compressed gas canister there within. Upon projection of the lid into the housing, the canister is pierced directing compressed gas from the canister into an underlying beer keg, whereupon beer is dispensed through a dispensing conduit.

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Patent No. 4406301A: Keg-Tapping Structure

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Today in 1983, US Patent 4406301 A was issued, an invention of Vincent J. Cerrato, for his “Keg-Tapping Structure.” Here’s the Abstract:

The invention contemplates removable structure to facilitate keg-tapping, and pressurized dispensing of liquid contents of the keg. A so-called Barnes neck forms part of the keg and has a bore with an elastomeric ring seal and flange at its lower end, and a valve-and-tube subassembly is inserted through the neck, to the point of valve-body compression of the seal, when secured by a removable retaining ring. In the course of such insertion, one or more radially inward lugs on the neck flange track corresponding slot formations in the subassembly. Each such slot formation has a first upward longitudinal course, leading to an angular bayonet-like offset course, and then to a second upward longitudinal course. The location of the angular offset is such that the valve body cannot compressionally load the seal ring in the absence of the partial rotation needed to develop lug alignment with the second upward longitudinal course.

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Beer In Ads #2045: The Brown Bottle Joke

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Monday’s ad is for Miller High Life, from 1913, published in the Telegraph Herald on July 2, 1913. In this curious ad, titled “The Result of Good Brewing—,” the scene is a parade of Germany soldiers. Though it’s hard to read, toward the bottom it reads “High Life in Germany,” while to the left the Miller Girl has been inserted into the illustration as if she’s watching the parade.

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But even more curious about this ad is the inset box, “The Brown Bottle Joke,” where they try to explain why using a clear bottle is actually better than using brown, and they do so without even mentioning why brown is preferred or indeed anything about what effect light would have on the beer after bottling.

The brown bottle fallacy has been so completely exploded that little is left to be said in defense of that side of the question which advocated the use of dark bottles to the absolute exclusion of light bottles. It is admitted that common beer comes in dark bottles and that beer of a high degree of stability is preferably bottled in light bottles.

Wahl-Henius Institute of Fermentology (America’s greatest authorities on brewing) are in accord with this view. Here is their statement in relation to the bottling of high-grade beer:

“FOR SUCH BEERS THE LIGHT BOTTLE is PREFERABLY EMPLOYED because it can more readily be inspected before filling to insure thorough cleanliness and because the finished package reveals at a glance whether the contents meet the requirements of the consumer as to color, clarity and freedom from sedimentation.”

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Patent No. 3693828A: Seamless Steel Containers

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Today in 1972, US Patent 3693828 A was issued, an invention of Raymond H. P. Kneusel and Vinson S. Potts, assigned to Crown Cork & Seal Co., for their “Seamless Steel Containers.” Here’s the Abstract:

A steel beverage or beer can of the seamless type having a unitary body including seamless side walls and an integral bottom with an end double seamed to the top of the side walls. The bottom comprises an outer frustoconical surface extending downwardly and inwardly from the side walls, an annular bead for supporting the can, an inner frustoconical surface extending upwardly and inwardly from the annular supporting bead, and a recessed domed central panel extending inwardly and upwardly along the axis of the can from the second frustoconical surface.

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Beer In Ads #2044: La Salle Street, Chicago

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Sunday’s ad is for Miller High Life, from 1945. In this ad, it’s very simple, showing a detailed view of La Salle Street in Chicago, Illinois, with no text apart from the location and then the name of the beer below. I don’t know if this was part of a series showing other locations or if there’s some special significance to this street in 1945. This would have been toward the end of the Second World War, so perhaps that has something to do with, but in the end there are more questions than answers, but it’s still an oddly comforting ad.

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