TJ's Tumblr!

gjmueller:

jtotheizzoe counts on you:

How to Order 43 Chicken McNuggets  

I don’t know why you’d want to, but this does teach a bit of a math lesson.

The guys at Numberphile asked what the largest number of McNuggets is that you can’t order (depending on where you live). Restaurants and retailers everywhere deal with math problems like this as a question of efficiency and product design.

It’s a lesson in Frobenius numbers, which are really just a fancy application of the coin problem: What combinations of counting units (coins or nuggets or whatever) must you provide in order to allow for the most eventual combinations?

Don’t try this at home, because no one needs even 1 McNugget.