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

[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.