Did Robert Parker Say That? Or Was It Our Robot?

Think you know a thing or two about the world’s most famous wine critic? Put your knowledge to the test with our quiz: Robert Or Robot. Try it out or keep reading to learn how our robot (Mr. Robert Markov Parker) works.

Did you know that the M in Robert M. Parker stands for Markov? No? Well it actually doesn’t. Markov Chains are interesting though. Hedonistic one might say! What’s a Markov Chain? You can click that link to Wikipedia for the complex process documented by Mr. Andrey Markov, but in plain-English what happens when you click the button below is the following:

• A little bit of software that we patched together scans through a huge body of Mr. Parker’s written words, from Articles of Merit, to interview responses, to tasting notes that have been publicly published (in newspapers for example).
• The software strips the text apart, follows a routine to create new sentences…we age it a bit in French oak, and magic.
• Sometimes the results are funny. Sometimes they’re non-sensical (try using his tweets as a corpus of text to see what non-sensical really means). Whatever the case, it’s a clear case of Fair Use for the purpose of parody!
• If you were wondering, the Markov Generator (we lovingly call it our Parkerbot here at VinePair HQ) does not run each time you try to guess. Scanning 30,000 words, running the algorithm, trimming the results at the end of complete sentences within our maximum character limit, and delivering them to you and a few hundred other people at once would be more than our servers could handle. So we ran the Parkerbot on our own, a couple hundred times, exported the results, and then mixed them together with real quotes. The guessing game is powered by a lightly modified version of SlickQuiz. A lot of wine was consumed putting this all together, but we think it was worth it. A 94 point effort at the very least!

So what are you waiting for? Go see if you can keep up with Robert Or Robot.

Header image via Shutterstock.com