At 12/10/2003 09:41 AM, Simon Furey wrote:
>> In Carmina Collegiensa, one of the earliest anthologies, there is further
>> appended an affecting tale of a New York professor who made a nuisance
>> of himself in his habitual restaurant because he always wanted more than
>> one portion of three buckwheat cakes for six cents, but less than two
>> portions for twelve. He insisted on five buckwhjeat cakes for ten cents,
>> drove everybody wild, and finally had to stay away from the restaurant
>> altogether.
>Seems perfectly reasonable to me, at 2 cents a cake. If he couldn't eat 6,
>why waste one? It's easier to pay with a dime, too.
>Simon.
Ah, but what if they're being cooked in triangular formation in a large
frypan just large enough for three? What if the recipe for three consumes
exactly one egg? In either of those cases, the efficiency of cooking any
number that is not a multiple of three is less than the efficiency of
cooking exactly three, making the restaurant's policy perfectly reasonable.
However, the restaurant could have set a policy of allowing the professor
to order exactly five buckwheat cakes only on those occasions when someone
else in the restaurant, ordering one fish ball, wanted to also order and
pay for a single buckwheat cake, an item normally unobtainable for the same
reasons of inefficiency as the professor's order of five.
Furthermore, the "pay with a dime" argument may be insufficient to explain
the professor's preference. From 1851 to 1889, the U.S. mint was issuing
three-cent coins -- see
http://www.coinfacts.com/denominations/types/three_cents/three_cents_silver_by_date.html
for details. According to the web site, the main purpose of this coin was
to facilitate the purchase of postage, but such coins would also have
facilitated the purchase of three buckwheat cakes when spent in matched
pairs or of six buckwheat cakes when spent in matched quartets. (Before
anyone asks, dimes were also available during the same era -- from 1796, in
fact.)
Howard L. Kaplan
Statistician and research methodologist
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Home page: http://www.thrinberry-frog.com
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