Tim.McGuinn.es/s

Just spell it out

Math Quiz — Big Data Smokehouse Version

July 11, 2017 by tmcgMNM

These are metal rods used to string herring and are then hung in the smokehouse rafters. How many are there?

This is my daughter’s favorite place in the world, The McCurdy Smokehouse one the eastern edge of the U.S in Lubec, Maine.  We really can’t explain why she loves this place, but the people that work there are really very nice to her and remember her each year, so it’s always the first place she wants to go once we get into town.  It works with me too since there’s a brewery directly across the street.

The McCurdy Smokehouse when the fog rolled in – Lubec, ME. Otherwise, you would see the channel and Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada. 

Math Quiz – This year I asked my daughter how many metal rods were stacked against this wall. So she started counting…….I stopped her. Then we started to create slices and ultimately squares. Got a guess?

Using the picture below, each cube was roughly 20×20, and we rounded the total number of cubes to 22 since it was not a full 5×5 wall.  So the final math: 20 x 20 x 22 = 8,800 rods against this wall.  Are we right? I’ll go with close enough because — remember — there’s a brewery across the sstreet that I need to get to.

Easiest extra credit ever? – There were 3 walls like this. How many total rods?

Using a grid to help calculate the total number of herring rods in the smokehouse.

Filed Under: Data Things, Featured, Things I See

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