Time to Raise a Glass

 

Guinness Storehouse - "Tick Followed Tock" - Guinness Advertisement 1999

As the clock winds down on 2025, as we toast the old year and look forward to the new, I find myself remembering my mathematical visit to the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, Ireland earlier this year. Mathematics certainly provides great excuses to visit a wide variety of places!

A Visit to Guinness Storehouse - Dublin, Ireland

The Storehouse is a 7-story extravaganza of all things Guinness from ingredients to brewing to adverisiting to shipping and more! It includes a restaurant and multiple bars, including the Gravity Bar that makes up the entirety of the 7th floor, which has one of the best views over the city of Dublin. Most tickets include a pint in the Gravity Bar at the end of your tour.

Guiness Storehouse - Dublin, Ireland

One floor is enirely devoted to Guiness's famously whimsical ads.

Guiness Storehouse - Dublin, Ireland

All of my travels involve mathematics in some way, so what's the math connection here? 

Guiness Storehouse - Dublin, Ireland

Guinness faced a practical quality-control problem: testing barley to ensure consistent brewing required destroying some of the product; therefore, only small samples could be used. Traditional statistical methods required large sample sizes and didn’t work well with such limited data. William Sealy Gosset, a brewer at Guinness with training in mathematics and chemistry, developed a new way to draw reliable conclusions from small samples. 

Guiness Storehouse - Dublin, Ireland

This method became what we now call the Student’s t-test. The name is due to a company policy. Guinness allowed Gosset to publish his work only under a pseudonym. The name he chose to use was “Student.” That pseudonym is why the test still bears that name today.

St. James's Gate Brewery - Dublin, Ireland

Guinness Storehouse - Dublin, Ireland

Guinness Storehouse - Dublin, Ireland

Guinness Storehouse - Dublin, Ireland

More than a century later, the Student's t-test still matters because it remains one of the most widely used tools for making sense of small data sets, from scientific research to medicine, economics, and more! So, if you raise a glass this New Year's Eve - especially if it's a pint of Guinness - be sure to remember the name William Sealy Gosset.

Heidi &Toby at Gravity Bar - Guinness Storehouse - Dublin, Ireland

To all my reader's - I wish you a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year!