Chris
08-29-2013, 10:02 AM
The science and mathematics behind the perfect sandwich...
Once more with filling: the secret to a perfect sandwich (http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/aug/26/sandwich-fillings-data-perfect-number)
Adding more ingredients to your sandwich will make it slightly more delicious, but it will make it moderately harder to handle, according to the results of my Great Sandwich Survey*.
...The most popular ingredients included in the sandwich type field were cheese, which featured in 17.9% of sandwiches, and then bacon, at 16.5%. One reader may have been slightly confused, and entered "pasta" under the sandwich type – or perhaps they ate a spaghetti sandwich.
http://i.snag.gy/FyNtv.jpg
To determine the relationship between structural integrity, deliciousness, and the number of ingredients I calculated the correlation between each pair, and then tested whether it was statistically significant or not.
There was no significant correlation between the deliciousness of a sandwich and its structural integrity.
There was however, a significant relationship between both deliciousness and the number of ingredients, and structural integrity and the number of ingredients.
http://i.snag.gy/2kjCB.jpg
...As the number of ingredients increases, there is a weak increase in the tastiness of a sandwich. The correlation coefficient, r, measures the extent of the correlation between two variables. Values of 1 or -1 are strong, and values closer to 0 are weaker. I expected this to be a stronger relationship than it is, but I suspect it's being dominated by sandwiches with a few ingredients and strong flavours, such as the popular bacon sanger. Indeed, the average number of ingredients was 3.6.
http://i.snag.gy/axXcZ.jpg
...And, not surprisingly, making sandwiches more elaborate makes them harder to handle. As the number of ingredients increased, the structural integrity decreased, with a negative correlation coefficient of -0.24.
http://i.snag.gy/JwMEQ.jpg
...And if you're going to chime in with a comment along the lines of "Hey, I knew all this already!", sometimes these things need to be quantified despite anecdotal evidence. Also it's fun and delicious.
Talk talk talk, when do we eat! http://i.snag.gy/1hRpx.jpg
Once more with filling: the secret to a perfect sandwich (http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/aug/26/sandwich-fillings-data-perfect-number)
Adding more ingredients to your sandwich will make it slightly more delicious, but it will make it moderately harder to handle, according to the results of my Great Sandwich Survey*.
...The most popular ingredients included in the sandwich type field were cheese, which featured in 17.9% of sandwiches, and then bacon, at 16.5%. One reader may have been slightly confused, and entered "pasta" under the sandwich type – or perhaps they ate a spaghetti sandwich.
http://i.snag.gy/FyNtv.jpg
To determine the relationship between structural integrity, deliciousness, and the number of ingredients I calculated the correlation between each pair, and then tested whether it was statistically significant or not.
There was no significant correlation between the deliciousness of a sandwich and its structural integrity.
There was however, a significant relationship between both deliciousness and the number of ingredients, and structural integrity and the number of ingredients.
http://i.snag.gy/2kjCB.jpg
...As the number of ingredients increases, there is a weak increase in the tastiness of a sandwich. The correlation coefficient, r, measures the extent of the correlation between two variables. Values of 1 or -1 are strong, and values closer to 0 are weaker. I expected this to be a stronger relationship than it is, but I suspect it's being dominated by sandwiches with a few ingredients and strong flavours, such as the popular bacon sanger. Indeed, the average number of ingredients was 3.6.
http://i.snag.gy/axXcZ.jpg
...And, not surprisingly, making sandwiches more elaborate makes them harder to handle. As the number of ingredients increased, the structural integrity decreased, with a negative correlation coefficient of -0.24.
http://i.snag.gy/JwMEQ.jpg
...And if you're going to chime in with a comment along the lines of "Hey, I knew all this already!", sometimes these things need to be quantified despite anecdotal evidence. Also it's fun and delicious.
Talk talk talk, when do we eat! http://i.snag.gy/1hRpx.jpg