Double Blind Pig 2024 Analysis
Campus Callosum
2024-09-28
Introduction
The Double Blind Pig: A Placebo Controlled Speakeasy is an event hosted by Campus Callosum at Burning Man. It’s now in its third year having been established in 2022.
The Pig is not just a bar, it’s also an experiment. When you order a drink, you flip a coin and get assigned to either the red or the blue condition. Your bartender serves you a drink of the corresponding color, and your job is to figure out whether or not it contains alcohol.
The experiment is double blind in that neither you nor your bartender knows if the drink contains alcohol. The drinks are mixed behind the scenes by a barback and placed in red and blue containers, so even the bartender doesn’t know what they’re serving!
We collect data throughout the event and this document summarizes our results from 2024!
The drinks
This year we had 4 types of drinks on offer (2 beers and 2 cocktails), each with an alcoholic and non-alcoholic version:
- IPA: Lagunitas Daytime IPA and Athletic NA IPA
- Guinness: Classic Guinness and the NA Guinness
- Moscow Mule: With and without vodka
- Bloody Mary: With and without vodka
Hypotheses
Our hypothesis is basically that people on the playa are pretty bad at telling what they’re consuming. The placebo effect can be strong and so we want to see if people can really tell when they’re consuming alcohol. The idea is to get the taste of the drinks as close as possible so that people have to go on how they feel but it’s hard to do!
# Constants
color.day = "#16324f"
color.grey = "#444444"
color.darkgrey = "#222222"
pal.drinks = c("#B22222", "#020202", "#FFC42E", "#32CD32")
pal.drinks.accent = c("#710000", "#e7d19f", "#7d5a00", "#116511")
pal.accuracy = c("#228B22", "#FF4500")
pal.colors = c("#2A628F", "#B22222")
pal.condition = c("#5B17AF", "#999999")