Pizza Math and Alumni Relations Event

By Aaron Rockwell, Staff Writer

This last week the Alumni Relations Department hosted a great event with FREE PIZZA. Coincidentally, there was an awesome turnout. This got me thinking about pizza, and I believe all math nerds would agree with me that calculating pizza values per size is one of the most fun ways one can spend his or her time.

A pizza decision includes:

Courtesy: Devika Chaturvedi

• area being an exponential function
• restaurants usually using a linear pricing scheme
• pizza specials
• wondering whether the crust is included in the diameter
• the cost of each additional topping
• vegetarian or meat
• how many people in total are eating
• what kind of eaters you have:
  • children
  • petite eaters
  • normal eaters
  • monster eaters

I compared two websites’ “how much to order” pizza calculations, one at 2.5 slices per person when ordering larges (14”) and the other one at 3.5 slices on medium pizzas (12”), and they actually come close to the amount needed per person at 48.5 square inches per person.

When ordering pizza for a group, estimate that each person needs about 48.5 square inches of pizza.

Here is an open-source excel document for anyone to go in and calculate their pizza costs.