Hot Dog Poll and Activity

Prepared by:

Joseph Malkevitch
Department of Mathematics
York College (CUNY)
Jamaica, New York 11451

email:

malkevitch@york.cuny.edu

web page:

http://york.cuny.edu/~malk

Poll:

1. The July 4th celebration is coming up soon. How many hot dogs do you personally expect to eat on July 4th?

2. Estimate how many hot dogs you eat a year.

Activity:

How might you model questions of the following type?

1. How many hot dogs will be consumed in NYC on July 4, 2016?

2. How many hot dogs are consumed in the United States on a typical day?

3. What other products that we eat might make for interesting "lessons" for K-12 students? What mathematics can be tied to questions of this kind?

4. Can you formulate some "fairness" questions related to eating hot dogs?

Information sources:

http://www.hot-dog.org/ht/d/sp/i/38599/pid/38599

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dog