The Curse of a Mathematician
In light of the fact that I'm nineteen turning twenty, I will tell a story of me as a child only a decade ago.
When I was nine, I was taken to a carnival where there was a big box of jelly beans and they wanted us to estimate the number of beans there were in there. The closest would get a scooter, the second a RC car, and the third a gift card for Toys-R-Us. Being the precise quantitative kid that I was, I looked at the nutrition facts: 25 beans per serving, 28 grams per serving, 4 pounds total. I did some mental arithmetic and figured out that there must be 65 servings in the whole container, each with 25 beans, giving me a total of 1625.
Turns out there were only 1500 beans in there. I was fourth. Someone guessed 1500 just because it was a round number. Someone else guessed 1600 because he estimated 10 beans in each direction horizontally and 16 vertically. (Very crude estimate). Someone else also guessed a number around 1600 due to a similar type of analysis. Nobody guessed 1625.
I think the jelly bean company is at fault for misadvertising the quantity. Personally, I don't think the person who organized the contest really counted every bean (maybe his son ate some of it). Even so, I don't regret my "guess"--it was the best I could make given the circumstances. I want my scooter!
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Comments
how exactly did you figure
how exactly did you figure out there were 65 servings in there? did they let you put it on a scale to measure the weight? i'm under the assumption they put jellybeans into a random box of an irregular shape.
companies don't measure their entire inventory. they randomly select a few and see if the difference from the advertised weight is statistically significant.
The container said 4 pounds.
The container said 4 pounds. Back then I knew that there were 454 grams per pound. So I did some math and divided 1800 (450*4) by 28 or so and got around 65-70 (I think I might have divided 2000 by 30 back then).
Well, they tend to overstate
Well, they tend to overstate it as well, often by as much as (legally?) possible. Just as they understate calories in foods.
I remember similar games, there were no labels, so I'd try to guess geometrically. I probably wouldn't have thought of taking the serving size route when I was 9, so I'm still impressed. Of course, coming from a school where nobody else knew how to do math, I have a couple clever stories. In 4th grade, I would challenge people to a game of checkers for money, and not move the back 4. I was surprised that nobody ever caught on (my teacher did after watching a couple games, then commenting on how I was a very logical thinker). The sad thing is, I had a study hall in 12th grade, and did the same thing. I probably played against 15 different people, several times each, and nobody ever picked up on what I was doing. That should illustrate the kinds of people I went to school with.
In kindergarten, I solved a problem involving how to split up cupcakes for the class, where my teacher, and the aide couldn't figure out how to do it. I wish I remembered the details of it.
Oh, like the fair cake
Oh, like the fair cake slicing problem?
No, it was more complicated
No, it was more complicated than that. It was something along the lines of finding a way to split 22 cupcakes among 24 students.