Last month, I was assisting in planning for food options for a youth event. This event would be held for middle schoolers and elementary students. Usually, middle school and elementary events are held on separate nights, but this time they were being held together. For food for the students, we provided pizza.
To calculate how much pizza we would need, I estimated that there would be 50 middle school students and 30 elementary students, based on usual attendance at these events. I also estimated that the middle school students would eat on average 3 pieces of pizza and the elementary students would eat 2 on average. I was going to order the pizza from Papa John’s, which is 8 slices per pizza. To calculate how much pizza the event would need, I did:
50(3) + 30(2) = 8n where n= the number of pizzas to order.
So, I figured that because 210 individual slices would be needed and divided this by 8,