Finding the Best Dog Treat with Statistics

wespiser_2018

Author here: I did a quick experiment with my Greyhound, Bebop, to figure out the treat he prefers best using pair-wise comparison analyzed with the Bradley-Terry model. Same tech as Elo scores in chess, and several other places! Enjoy!

dice

I missed the word "Treat" in the title initially and I was incensed . All dogs are the best dog TYVM.

buildsjets

The best dog treat is always the treat the OTHER dog is eating.

CM30

This makes me wonder what the research is for whether certain types or breeds of dog prefer certain dog treats, and how individual dogs might develop a preference for one kind over another. Based on this experiment it doesn't seem like the type of meat matters much, since while the top ranked treat is chicken, his second favourite seems to be the duck one.

lijok

Bebop is clearly being paid off by Big Chicken to skew the results

thih9

My dog told me to write that the set of treats is missing non bleached rawhide, other dehydrated meats (eg rabbit, goat, fish), animal parts (eg ears), and vegetables. Also, he volunteers.

pnw

Beautiful hound!

doglover737484

Add some interesting smells and dogs will eat absolutely anything. Used tampons, literal shit, soiled underwear, dierhia, dead bird, freshly killed cat, they owners... It is basically a pig with collar that lives in your house.

dieselgate

Our Malinois really liked the dehydrated chicken too, currently finishing a bag of the Trader Joes organic chicken jerky sticks. Interesting idea for some experiments, thanks for sharing

FrankenDino

You should really try Growlers dog bones. https://growlersdogbones.org/

pike00

Interesting read! I might replicate with my two whippets. What’s their inter-rater reliability? You also should continue with a swap of the hands; randomize which one is in the left and record the results to see if the left bias is real

jnellis

My dog's favorite treat is the most expensive one. Or the one that causes the most intestinal (and therefore cleanup) issues. All it takes is a pause and some brief math to see that a lot of (good for your dog) dog treats are $16/lb. That's not even remotely the most expensive. It's cheaper to feed them straight meat. I've resorted to making my own treats. It's like $4/lb, plus you know exactly what goes into it (mostly ground turkey, yams, rice/chickpea flour).

gwern

One thing I'm not following is how the side/order bias is being handled. OP measures a IMO very large bias towards left-hand treats, but it is unclear how that is handled (ahem)? Skimming https://github.com/adamwespiser/best-dog-treat/blame/main/an... doesn't help me understand if it is being modeled as a covariate to adjust for the bias or if it was dealt with by construction (eg. by always offering pairs twice, swapping hands), or what? Incidentally OP if you want to make it more adaptive, you can just fit the B-T model each time, and grab a posterior sample of what the best pair is, and test that , which turns out to be Thompson sampling. I did this for fun with blind taste-testing of mineral waters: https://gwern.net/water

zerobees

In my experience, it's usually a partly-rotten deer leg found in the bushes on a nature walk.

abofh

This just feels like an excuse to give your dog a statically significant amount of treats

democracy

nothing beats diy dehydrated turkey mince stripes... but pita to make them )))