my mathy family

I knew that sooner or later, after I posted my little caesar's story, someone in my family would weigh in. I swear I have the mathy-est family in the world. From Steve (sorry if this embarrasses you, I didn't see any legal restrictions on reprinting your email). I've bolded my favorite parts:

"I read your article “pizza facts and factorials“.  Your article may be factual in its recollection of events but the actual way this calculation is done is wrong.  Simple factorials will tell you all possible combinations, allowing for repeated selections.  You should treat the problem as a combination problem.  This is very common problem in computer applications and does not require the services of a mathematician, a undergraduate college student will suffice.  In fact, a Wikipedia article or an article from Microsoft is sufficient to explain both the problem and how to do the calculations.

  Some time ago, the historical Blacksburg pub, the Cellar was redoing their menu.  They wondered exactly how many combinations of calzone they offered. Much drunken intellectual debate, that closely resembles your article,  ensued.  Because of Tammie, they asked me do the calculation for them.  My report to them is below, including a simple spreadsheet that will do the calculation for them in case they add or remove toppings.  To this day their menu states, “Try one of our 6,144 calzones” on the cover.

So what’s the answer for Little Caesar’s?  It’s 44,552 per pie or 89,104 for both, assuming they have 23 potential toppings (probably a bad assumption). "

Hahahahahaha...I knew I could get at least one more person obsessed with the little caesar's problem. 

 In closing, I can't believe those assholes didn't take the time to hire someone to provide a mathematically correct answer. And if anyone wants a copy of my brother's spreadsheet, too bad. Only I am allowed to have it.

pizza facts and factorials

After all these years, I don't know why I'm still obsessing about this...

Back in the early nineties there was a little caesar's commercial on tv (I found it on youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmlRAstCCro). In the commercial there's a pizza special - 2 pizzas, 5 toppings each. The little boy in the commercial says "wow, the possibilities are endless". The dad says "what do you mean, 5 + 5 are 10". And the little boy says "actually, it's 1,480,576 possibilities".

So, for fun, I decided to try to calculate the number. I decided it would be a factorial:


n•(n - 1)•(n - 2)•(n - 3)....•1

For 5:
5•4•3•2•1 = 120

Not even close.

So I wrote the number and the problem on the white board in my office to work on when I needed a break. That proved to be a disaster since I was working with a bunch of mathematicians. Everyone became obsessed with the problem and we would spend hours arguing about it.

One of the mathematicians said that, since you could get all the same toppings on one pizza, the problem was 30! (5 toppings + 5 of the same topping * 5 - though this was debated as being wrong). That answer:

30! Factorial -    265,252,859,812,191,058,636,308,480,000,000

We then began calling little caesars pizza places to find out how many toppings they had to select from. The average was 10 so we did 10! -  3,628,800.

After more arguing, calculating, and one guy writing a computer program, we gave up on finding the answer. So I went to the library (this was back before companies were on the internet - wow, that makes me feel old) and looked up the address for little caesar's corporate headquarters. I sent a letter to the president asking how the number used in the commercial was calculated. I suggested in my letter that they must have hired someone to calculate the number, rather than making something up, because it wouldn't have been that expensive to hire a mathematician. And I also had a rambling paragraph about the sorry state of math in the US.


In response I received a form letter, and $30 worth of coupons for free little caesar's pizzas. I gave the coupons away and have, to this day, never eaten little caesar's pizza because I was so pissed about the commercial. 


Last year I finally took the commercial number off the back of my calculator, where I had taped it in case I had a sudden insight into where it might have come from.

snake face

I had another weird dream last night. In the dream I was in a doctor's office because I had cancer. The doctor was pushing me around in a wheel chair and he said that since I had to have surgery for the cancer I should also consider getting plastic surgery. I was like "I don't think I need plastic surgery" and the doctor said "but we can make you look unique!"

Then I saw a wheel chair coming in the other direction. There was a small woman, and she had cloth where her nose had been removed. Her entire face was covered with white beads sewn into her skin, and he eyelids had black beads. The doctor said "this woman had her nose cut off and her face beaded so she could look like a snake". She did look like a snake, sort of. And I got scared as her chair was getting closer to mine. When she was about 10 feet away from me she took a huge leap out of her chair and I realized she was jumping on top of me and that she was going to kill me.

Then I woke up

Publish Post

lights

On Saturday I finally, after four years of procrastination, bought new track lighting for my house. I hate shopping, especially for boring things, like lights.

I had done some research and had an idea of what I wanted. I went to lamps plus and was immediately engulfed in the mob that was shopping there. I was like are you fucking kidding me? Why would so many people be shopping for lights on a beautiful Saturday afternoon (I had to because it was the only day I could go). There were literally lights, fans, and water fountains every where, all blinking and blowing and bubbling at the same time. On top of that, there were three families with small children running and screaming all over the place (seriously people, please - don't take your kids in public if you can't control them - like what possible reason is there to bring kids to a light store? - shop online or leave them at home - just because your kids torture you with their bad behavior is no reason to expose the innocent public to your bad parenting).

I did what I usually do in those situations. I stayed on the perimeter of the store, near the windows, and decided I would walk around the perimeter of the store and leave. As I was heading into the first perimeter turn an older guy sitting in a chair in the corner of the store said to me "Hi". I said hi back and smiled. Then he said "you knocked me down, you owe me $500,000". I was like what the fuck, so I ignored him and kept walking. So he said, louder this time "You KNOCKED ME DOWN. You owe me $500,000!" Tres embarrassing. Why do the crazies always target me? I later saw him with a younger woman carrying the biggest floor lamp ever out of the store.

As I was about to leave a sales guy came over to me and asked if I needed help. Um, duh! I explained my idea for replacing all my track lighting, showed him pictures, and then he passed me off to another sales woman. She kept me waiting for 10 minutes while some annoying fuck asked her the same damn questions over and over again:

"does this lamp come in red?"
"no, it only comes in silver or gold"
"can I order it in red?"
"no, it only comes in those two colors"
"okay, so I guess I have to figure out what color I want...(pause) does it come in red?"

I could have screamed. But, then another sales woman came over. For the third time I explained my project. She did a great job helping me pick out light fixtures and fans for my room and my dad's room. But, it was still BORING. And took TWO hours. I don't ever want to have to do anything to my track lights again after this project is done.

Tomorrow the electrician is coming to give me an estimate. I can't wait until my new lights are up!!!!!

missile stickers

Last night I had the weirdest dream.

I dreamed the FRG and I were working security in the white house. Bush Jr. was still president. Anyway, we were sitting in an office outside Bush's office "protecting" him.

We were bored and suddenly the FRG said "wouldn't it be funny if we made something on Bush's door so it looked like a big missile blasted through it?" I was like hm, that would be kind of funny. So I went out on the internet and downloaded a bunch of free graphics and then I made a power point presentation that looked like a big hole made by a missile.

Then we snuck down to a special office that had a printer that made cool stickers and made a huge sticker of my power point. We then snuck back up to the office and put the sticker on Bush's door. A few seconds later some secret service guys came up to yell at us because we had left our post. Then they saw the sticker and they were like "oh my god! the president!"

I was like "it's just a sticker" and they were like "that wasn't funny, you're fired". The FRG said "Yay, we hate working here!" and gave me a high five.

FRG and I started laughing really hard. Then I woke up because I had started really laughing.

No idea what that dream is supposed to mean...