Math gives you an edge in candy-in-a-jar contest
| August 5, 2009 | 2:32 PM
More journal entries from Cindy House »
So you and your family are at the State Fair and you walk past a promotional table with a giant jar of candy and a sign reading “Guess the correct number of jelly beans and win a Wii!” Your kids have been begging you for a Wii for ages, but they’re certainly not going to stand still while you painstakingly count jelly beans one by one.
What’s a harried parent to do? Pull out the calculator and recall those halcyon days of algebra class, because researchers have developed a model to accurately estimate candy in a jar.
The technical term is “objects randomly packed together in a container,” but I prefer “candy in a jar.”
Here’s a description of the formula from project leader Jasna Brujic:
“First, estimate the size of the jar,” instructs Brujic. “Then look to see if all the candies are the same size. If they are, take 64 percent of that volume and divide it by the size of the candy to get the total number that would randomly fit inside. If they aren’t equally sized, divide a slightly larger area, around 70 percent, by the average size of the candies.”
If the jar is filled with jelly beans, you might have to make some additional adjustments. The researchers based their calculations on spherical objects.
OK, so if x equals the approximate volume of the jar and y equals the size of the candy (say, measured horizontally), the formula works out to . . . um . . . er, I’m not actually sure. It was my understanding there’d be no math at this fair.
