During lunch, my son had a great insight. Here's what he had to say.
Well, we never did a DNA test but I'm pretty sure he's related to me. Good job with the rough estimation. But now let's check his rough calculation.
How much does a potato chip cost?
How many potato chips are in a bag? My son said you could just count them - but who wants to count potato chips? Potato chips are for eating, not counting. But look at the back of the bag. Oh, these are Lays BBQ Chips.
It says it right there. One serving of chips should be about 15 chips and the bag contains 10 servings. That's 150 chips (ok, "about 150 chips"). What about the cost? I should point out that my son doesn't normally do the grocery shopping. The front of the bag says it costs $4.29 - but I'm pretty sure the bag was on sale. However, let's go with the higher price. That means we can calculate the cost of one chip.
So he was wrong. One chip costs 2.86 cents instead of just 1 cent. But it was a great estimate.
What about other chips?
Are some chips more expensive (per chip) than others? Now is the time for some data. It's actually quite easy. Go to the grocery store and look at the bags of chips. You should be able to find the price and the nutritional information gives the serving size and the number of servings. Simple.
Here is my brief survey.
There you have it. One Ruffles chip costs about 3 cents. The cheapest are pretzels and Cheetos---but really, those are smaller anyway. The * on a couple of the chip labels means that those chips were on sale.
What if you went to the store and spent 75 cents. You gave the cashier a dollar and you were offered either a quarter in change or 25 potato chips. Take the chips.
But wait! There are still more questions.
- Do bigger bags of chips have a lower chip price than those tiny bags from the vending machine?
- How much does it cost for the bag itself?
- What is the price per calorie?
I guess you will have to answer these questions or wait until my son starts a blog.
