A Recursive Process

Part 1 and Part 2.

There have been a couple of questions regarding the validity of my measuring process. The one that irked me the most was the fact that I had never measured the weight of the wafers of the Double Stuf. Was it possible that the wafers for the Oreo and Double Stuf were different? They have a different stamp on the top. Were they different weights too?

Previously I had found it very difficult to remove a wafer without any creme remnents from a Double Stuf. It always left some residue on the wafer. However, a local news channel came over (for my last interview, I’m done) and brought a box of Oreos and a box of Double Stuf. After the interview, the cameraman asked if I could unbox the Oreos and take them apart for the B-roll footage to be played while I was talking. However this time the wafers came off the Double Stuf with no problem at all.

I could find the answer to the biggest issue with my methodology in measuring the Oreos! All my questions would be answered! This was very exciting! (Well not really, but I was interested.)

So to recalculate. 23 Double Stuf wafers weigh 100g, so each wafer weighs about 4.35 g. Meanwhile the average Original Oreo wafer weighs about 4.04 g. The average Double Stuf Oreo weighs 14.67g, and so the Double Stuf creme weighs 14.67 – 2(4.35) = 5.97 g.

Conclusion

DS creme / Oreo creme = 5.97 / 3.48 = 1.7 stuf.

Conclusive? Heck no. Do the measurement in your home or classroom. Prove me wrong. Measure the density of the stufs’. Are they different? How much does the creme cost compared to the wafer? Which has more calories? Do some fancy statistical measurements. Is averaging the best tool to be used in the calculations?

Professor Don out.

So things have gone a bit crazy lately. While on summer vacation, this happened:

All for a blog post that I wrote in February.
(My previous high for views in one day was 299.)

In the original post where my class suggests that the Double Stuf Oreo is only 1.86x stuffed, the data set is small. There were several groups all working on their own measurements so they didn’t have many cookies to work with.

After all the attention (I feel really weird about it), the math part of my brain had to verify the findings. And after all, I’d hate to be wrong on the internet.

More Data

36 Regular Oreos (1 package)

30 Double Stuf Oreos (1 package)

Split Oreos (bad splits are on the right, not measured)

23 Oreo wafers

Thrill Packed Conclusion

Do the calculations yourself! Or I suppose you can it read here.

Lastly

For me, this was never about proving Nabisco right or wrong. I don’t care about the “stuf”ing of the Oreos as long as they are delicious (which they are, Double Stuf is my favorite). This was about having the students do some great mathematical exploration on their own. Before doing this in class, I had no idea what the result would be. As a couple of the groups proved, you can show that they are double “stuf”ed by measuring the heights of the cookies.

Media Coverage of this “Double Stuf Scandal”

• Huffington Post – 8/16/13
• Reddit – 8/18/13
• Good Morning America online – 8/19/13
• Daily Mail.co.uk – 8/20/13 (they used that picture of me???)
• Fox News with Shep Smith – 8/20/13 video
• Gawker – 8/20/13
• New York Daily News – 8/20/13
• CNN – 8/21/13 video
• Post Star (local paper) – 8/21/13
• WNYT, NBC affiliate – 8/21/13 video
• Business Insider (they retested the experiment) – 8/23/13 video