Weber teaches me a lesson

Alphy thinks I am a master at the stove. She relishes the dishes I make. The other day it was my deft hands working on a roast dish that turned out near perfect. But then I let it get to me. I make it again the next day, and though Alphy likes it, she isn't as impressed as the day before. I am chastened and I've learnt my lesson.

Weber taught me the lesson. Let me now share it with you.

Weber's Law states that the ratio of the increment threshold to the background intensity is a constant. So when you are in a noisy environment you must shout to be heard while a whisper works in a quiet room. And when you measure increment thresholds on various intensity backgrounds, the thresholds increase in proportion to the background.

The Roast on the first day set a threshold to Alphy's taste buds. Which was pretty high, I must say. After all, don't I have magic on my hands? The sad part is, that was the reason to my downfall. For the next day's roast to garner praise it had to raise its taste level beyond the just noticeable difference as relevant to the taste threshold set. I guess the second day's roast couldn't do that. And therefore the praise dried up.

The lesson I've learnt is, to keep the praise pipeline running, I got to either, a) not repeat a dish after a high taste threshold's been set or, b) burn the dish the first time around.

The latter's a dangerous road to take, the former sounds sensible. What I'll do, I guess is any body's guess. Or is it?

Comments

Matz said…
Is'nt this the same as creating an impression in the mind of the person, and then for the second time around trying to match or exceed the expectations of the person, based on the first impression created by you.

For example - When you first cooked the roast dish for Alphy, she dint have any expectation on how the dish would be. After she tried it and liked it, an impression of the dish was created in her mind.
On making the dish the second time, she had an expectation on how good your dish would be, and a bench mark to compare your second dish with; (your first dish).
As the expectation bar was raised higher, it became more difficult to satisfy her.
Unknown said…
in this case also customer is benefited by marketer intelligence.
she will have new dish daily :)
Its like raising the bar (standard)

Don Bradman set the standards very high in test cricket. Hence it's difficult for other achievers to impress the viewers.

However, its easy in T20 to gain fame with relative ease as there are no high standards when T20 started.

Yuvraj Singh raised the bar in T20.
Ray Titus said…
Dead right, Mathew! :)

New dish a day, Nikhil? Maybe I should burn it, smoke it, and make it...in that sequence!

That's if I am allowed to live! :)

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