Back to School

While Labor Day and the beginning of the college football season are being celebrated this weekend only in the U.S., Back-to-School season is being celebrated in much of the northern hemisphere. To help refresh your mathematical skills, I thought I'd share with you a recent exercise I went through at the supermarket. It's a prime example of why everyone needs to pay attention in math class.

The local supermarkets don't really have "deli counters" because the Chinese eat noodles in place of sandwiches. So I have to go to the Western supermarkets to get cold cuts. Anytime "western" is used here, it basically means 2-3 times the cost of what you would pay for it in the U.S. This is why I usually only by 6 or 8 slices of turkey at a time - it's so expensive that I don't want to have to throw any of it out.

While at the very luxurious deli counter in "Great" (the Western supermarket I go to most often purely because it's convenient), I have found this amazing smoked gouda cheese to eat with sandwiches, or really just by itself. I am quasi-obsessed with it. I always feel like I'm being pretty good, too, because the cheese I like is the cheapest in the cooler. Now, pretty much every thing here is in the metric system so I still a little trouble knowing how much I am getting and how much it costs. As I was waiting for my cheese to be sliced on Friday, I decided I should really figure out how much I was actually paying for this cheese. Here is where the math exercise comes in:

"If smoked gouda cheese costs HK$26 per 100 grams, how many U.S. $ does it cost to buy 1 pound of smoked gouda cheese at Great supermarket?"

1. 1 pound (lb) = 453.6 grams (gm) . Therefore, 100 grams = (100gms / 453.6 gms/lb) = 0.22lbs
2. So, the cheese costs HK$26 per 0.22 lbs
3. Now, on a per lb basis, the cheese costs HK$118 / lb. This comes from taking $26 / 0.22 lbs.
4. Here comes the currency conversion :) US$1 = HK$7.80 so HK$118 = (HK$118 / (HK$7.8/US$)) = US$15.12
5. Yes, the correct answer is that 1 pound of smoked gouda cheese costs US$15.12.

This is a great exercise! Some basic algebra, decimals, conversions. All very exciting, isn't it?...until you get the answer. I just about fell over. It never seems like that much money because I only buy a few slices at a time. I should have put my math schools to use awhile ago.

I instantly started trying to remember how much I paid for cheese at Sendiks or the Metro Market. I'm pretty sure that it wasn't ever anywhere close to $15.12/lb, except for that amazing blue cheese that I used to get at Metro Market. The problem is, the cheese is so good! Chris is a fan of it as well. So we talked about it and decided that as long as I didn't buy a pound of cheese at a time, we should keep on enjoying the creamy taste of heaven.

We hope you enjoy your long weekend. It was just a regular one for us - no public holiday tomorrow. The good news is, we got our slingbox working and were able to hear about the fantastic Michigan loss and watch the big Badger win! On Wisconsin!