Candy Corn Math: How Our Winners Won

[Marcus Yam]

See kids, this is why you should stay in school. Candy maths.

Candy Corn Math: How Our Winners Won : Read more

 

[ubernoobie]

Umm, who won the case?

 

[logitic]

Damn you math. You have foiled me for the last time!!!!!!!!!

 

[Supertrek32]

Corngratulations? Can you get any more corny? =P

 

[sunflier]

I would have been closer than any of these had TH staff not snacked on them before it was over.

 

[plinkoblinko]

haha, guess ftw!

 

[sliem]

Plain lucky guessing all the way.

 

[Marcus Yam]

[citation][nom]ubernoobie[/nom]Umm, who won the case?[/citation]
Winners were announced in a previous story:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/candy-corn-corsair-contest-ssd,9222.html

 

[juanc]

The real issue is buying a case to know it's real volume. For the candy corn poral space and volume you can fill a kitchen tool that measures water volume and know how much candy corn fits in that volume.

But without knowing the real volume of the case is hard to estimate.

 

[liquidblue]

I still want the candy corn >.

 

[ckthecerealkiller]

I used a very similar method to Erin. Only I figured a packing fraction of .68... I did figure the size of the drive cages and just subtracted that from the total volume. Which probably threw me off a bit. I got 50,180. Congrats again!

 

[brendano257]

Very nice use of math. The actual method was developed by Enrico Fermi, he made estimates on the size of things like the universe, and was famous for not giving an exact number, but saying "on the order of." He didn't put much value in exact numbers, but whether or not he was 10times too small or 10times too large, if not, then it was close enough.

Just a little tidbit from HighSchool Physics....

 

[bluegene]

Oh the irony...pure guess got the accurate answer

 

[Pei-chen]

[citation][nom]bluegene[/nom]Oh the irony...pure guess got the accurate answer[/citation]
Justin Langness of Long Beach, CA is actually Justin Long a.k.a. I'm a Mac. He used his superior OS to guess the number.

 

[agnickolov]

It'd have helped if the dimensions were obtainable on the Internet. I did my my math too, but I came with 2 millions. For the record I've never seen the stuff in my life and I wasn't about to go shopping for it for a mere contest...

 

[IzzyCraft]

[citation][nom]sliem[/nom]Plain lucky guessing all the way.[/citation]
Just proves i rather be lucky then anything else

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]sunflier[/nom]I would have been closer than any of these had TH staff not snacked on them before it was over.[/citation]

Yuck, no way. Who actually eats those things?

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Yuck, no way. Who actually eats those things?[/citation]

Plenty of people.

 

[JMcEntegart]

[citation][nom]False_Dmitry_II[/nom]Plenty of people.[/citation]

pics or it didn't happen.

 

[anamaniac]

[citation][nom]JMcEntegart[/nom]pics or it didn't happen.[/citation]
Nothing like a late night lol... which is bad, because others are sleeping...
I'm imagining a redhead snacking on a case with 50,712 peices of candycorn in it in a oretic way...

Candycorn is awesome. I would rather it over the cae.

 

[yugmus]

I originally estimated that the candy corn was .0625 in^3 and had a 90% efficiency in filling the case with all the blocked areas and whatnot. and estimated around 74000. I figured I would check my math on jellybelly's website by checking some containers to see if the specified qty. in a specific size container. They did have a 36 qty. 1 oz. package that I used to calculate that there are ~5700 candy corns in a 10 lb. box. There were 12 boxes on the table and I assumed they used them all and it led me to guess 69000. It looks like they only used about 9 boxes though or my math is way off. I should have taken the time to measure a candy corn but I was too lazy I guess. I didn't win but I enjoyed the 5 minutes I took to calculate my answer.

 

[matt87_50]

so the person that just took a wild guess got closer than the two who used Maths.

better to be lucky than smart I guess.

 

[Metaspherz]

I love that the lucky guess was closer to the exact amount of candy corn in the case than the various math intensive answers. I bet Einstein used the same method throughout his career and then fudged the math afterwards to justify all his hypotheses.

 

[4trees]

I'm a big advocate of winging it, especially when it comes to math without a calculator around. Good job Justin I'm so proud of your good senses.

 

[kingofsales]

OH math
congrats to the winners