# Statistics on tastings

Some people at my workplace have had some fun lunch discussion as of late, concerning some people's alleged ability to taste the difference between things one thought one shouldn't be able to taste a difference between. We have hence decided to do a small "competition" (or however you want to call it), where said abilities are to be tested and quantified. Being the one of us who took a course in statistics, I'm trying to find out the best experimental design and statistics to use. Not really being a statistician, I went here to get some help, for which I'd be very appreciative!

One of the tests we will do is the ability to taste the difference between the bottom and top half of an apple (i.e. flower vs. stem parts). My initial thinking was a simply blind-folding the taster and giving them parts of an apple one at a time, recording if they were RIGHT or WRONG (categorical values). I'd also have pieces coming from different apples, both of the same and of difference kinds of apples. A null hypothesis here would be 50 % (i.e. same proportion of right/wrong, p=0.5), and alternative hypothesis would be > 50% (p_hat). Standard error (SE) is sqrt(p(1-p)/n) and Z = (p_hat - p)/SE.

Would this be a correct way of doing it? If not, how far off am I and what should I do instead, perhaps a t-test? What if the test is the tasting a difference between three things, rather than two; would it be wrong to still use a simple right/wrong metric, or should something else be used?