check my math?

[james_davis_nicoll]

There have been two parties of about 40 people each. I am going to assume consumption scales linearly with the number of people*. At a guess, the next three parties will look like this: 50 people, 80 people, 80 people for a total of 210 people, or about 2 1/2 times what we've already gone through. We went through six giant (650 gram, I think) bags of chips, and four regular bags of cheeZees so what we need is 12 – 15 big bags of chips and chip equivalents and 10 regular bags of CheeZees, which I think is the same as five big bags. So up to 17 big bags. Which, wow, seems like a lot.

(and then there are special cases like gummy worms, where a fair sized container disappeared in 15 minutes)

* I have been assured that it does not. Sadly, half the people I asked said consumption per person drops off as numbers rise and half said that consumption per person rose.

Comments

[vatine]

Consumption-per-person growth is not linear. It is also not smooth, there are step functions at (or rather around) certain group group sizes, where there's a dramatic change.

As to "below 1" (that is "shrinks") or above one ("grows"), it is heavily dependent on both macro-culture ("where are you", I do not expect these things to be the same in UK or Sweden, I suspect Canada is different again) and micro-culture ("office do", "theatre company", "IT gripe fest", ...)

[james_davis_nicoll]

*cries uncontrollably*

On a related note, I discovered while playing food allergy tetris with meals for the company that we have undocumented members of the company who have allergy and food sensitivity issues. At least one of who has at least four issues they are aware of, one of which was formally shared with me. I know what one of the others is. One of them.

It began with "wait, why isn't Issue X listed in the A&FS matrix? Person Y has Issue X. Oh, crap: they're old FASS, they didn't bother to fill out an audition form." And I didn't notice because I expect to see them. And then the panic spiral began.

[vatine]

If you're looking at a "roughly 2x to 5x" increase (40 to 200-odd), you have maybe 1 or 2 steps in there. Rough guess is "direct linear extrapolation is a factor of 2 of correct"" (given same time and same approximate macro- and micro-culture). If what you had now was sufficient, scale it directly by the numbers and add half again of the non-perishables and you will at worst look a little bit stingy and at best have non-perishables for next year.

Yep, used to do food planning for student functions and small-ish dinners-for-friends (seldom more than 20 guests, so "small"). Knowing your target audience is key in these things. Oh, also used to run the concession stand for a gaming convention. I have a rough feel for how many pallets of soft drinks you need for every hundred con-goers.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

It increases at the inverse of the exponential of the number of people attending, down to an absolute minimum of 1 serving per person at an infinite number of people.

[dsrtao]

Depends on time of day and nature of event and a bunch of things, but if you have a base case of 40 people and the events are similar, linear is the way to bet for extrapolations to 2-5x.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

If the implicit problem here is "How much should we buy?"---there is no downside to overbuying, as these things never go stale and can be stored in a locker for next year.

Time of day affects how much snacking people do at parties, also. Also, age of attendees.

[felila.livejournal.com]

My experience with cooking for meditation retreats is that fewer people mean a wider range of possible consumption (perhaps one participant will be a heavy eater) so you have to buy more just in case. With more people, consumption averages out and you can get away with budgeting slightly less per person.

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

15.75 = 16 big bags of chips
10.5 regular bags of of cheeZees = 5.25 Large, rounding up to 6 at your conversions rates.

Someone... asked me to do a arithmetic word problem. In real life.

To all my students--see, it does happen! And if it were done wrong, there might not be the right amount of snacks.

(does happy dance)

[colliemommie.livejournal.com]

Yay algebra! I've always believed that the people who swear they never use algebra in real life are just too stupid to know that's what they're doing.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

No, there are people that actively avoid doing algebra. If they were put into a situation like this one, they'd either convince someone else to do the math for them, or just shrug and fill up a cart with groceries, with no idea if they were getting too much or too little.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

Unless your budget is tight, I'd go linear. At worst you have a few bags left over.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Unhelpfully, I'll wonder what the effect on consumption is from variety as well as quantity. So, for example, if X people consume Y bags of chips if you get a single type of chip, will they also consume Y bags of chips of you get Z different types?

[kiya]

I have observed that when a party of N people go to a Chinese restaurant with the intent to purchase N dishes and share them around, there are fewer leftovers than when N people go to a Chinese restaurant and obtain N dishes with intent to eat them themselves.

[seawasp]

Also depends on age of participants as well as time of day. There's a reason teenagers are notorious for eating all the time, and a crowd that has 25% mid-teens to early 20s participants may well blow through far more bags than one with few or no such young people.

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

If you're talking about the Friday late party, remember that it goes on past dawn, and people will be getting hungry again.

Actually, the Saturday strike party goes on all night too, as I recall.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is VICE?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

FASS' Vice President organizes and runs the parties.