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.