Trick or Treat or Math

I have a theory that most great academic work is undertaken in order to prove somebody else wrong. There's nothing quite like the rush that comes from getting to do an obnoxious "told you so" dance, and--if you're a nerd like me--that joy is easily multiplied tenfold when you get to footnote your gloating with sources and facts and snooty research. (Or, in this case, "research" with air quotes.)

It's not unlike a sugar rush, you might say. What an appropriate analogy, because we're talking about Halloween candy! You might think tonight is just a night for costumes and free candy (or, if you're an adult, costumes and booze), but for me, it was the scene of a grand experiment.

BACKGROUND
Like all great experiments, mine had its roots in a great debate. But first, I need to set the scene. My sister and I, being your typical millennials, both live at home still. The difference between living at home as a teenager and living at home as an adult, however, is that when Halloween rolls around, you are now in charge of buying the candy instead of just eating it with wild abandon.

But since communication is apparently not one of Tracey's and my strong points, we did not coordinate on the purchase of our Halloween candy. Which meant that we ended up with ten bags of various fun-sized chocolate bars, a fact that I did not discover until about a week before Halloween, when I mentioned to my father that I'd bought some candy.

"I think Tracey did, too," he said. "But what did you get?"

"100 Grands," I said. "3 Musketeers. Yorks."

"YORKS?!" my dad shouted. He was driving at the time, and I half-expected him to dramatically slam on the brakes in indignation and disbelief. "You bought Yorks? That's the worst candy ever!"

"I like Yorks!" I insisted. "Who doesn't love peppermint? I never used to get them in my treat bag as a kid--"

He snorted. I ignored him.

"--and I would have liked to, so I got them as a service to all the other neighborhood kids."

"I was listening to the radio the other day," he said, disregarding my impassioned defense of peppermint patties, "and they voted those the worst candies. What else did you get?"

"Butterfingers," I said, feeling confident in this choice, at least.

"You got all the terrible ones!" he cackled. "That was like the third worst on the list."

"I've never met someone who doesn't like Butterfingers!" I insisted. "I mean, maybe some of my friends don't really like them like them, but I've never met anyone who vehemently dislikes them."

"I hope Tracey picked better candies than you," was the only rejoinder I got.

The next day, I had the chance to ask Tracey which candies she'd bought. "Milky Ways, Kit-Kats, Snickers, 100 Grands, Crunch, and Butterfingers," she said. "Why, what did you get?"

"100 Grand, Butterfingers, 3 Musketeers, and Yorks," I said.

"YORKS?!" she hooted. "What are you, eighty-five years old?!"

"WHAT DID I TELL YOU?" my dad shouted, appearing out of nowhere to gloat.

"Do you hate children?" Tracey said. "Do you even want people to come to our house?"

It was then that I decided to take on what is undoubtedly the greatest, most relevant, and most important experiment of our time: I was going to prove that Yorks are a legitimate Halloween candy choice, dammit, or I was going to die trying.

THE (100) GRAND EXPERIMENT
I was the sole person in charge of distributing candy this year, given that everyone else conveniently had plans to be out of the house during prime trick-or-treating time. So I put my plan in motion.

I emptied all the available 100 Grands and Butterfingers into the candy basket without bothering to count them--since Tracey and I had both picked them, they weren't part of the argument. I decided to put in equal numbers of all the other candies and observe which, if any, were left at the end of the night. Due to the fact that Tracey had taken some of her candy to distribute among her coworkers, I had only 14 Snickers and 14 Kit-Kats left to work with, so I put 14 of each type of candy into the basket, mixed things up as well as I could, and waited for 6:00 to roll around.

The first hour or so went by pretty uneventfully. The kids were told they could each take one piece of candy, although I saw a couple sneak two. (Clearly scientific variables mean NOTHING to these children.) At 6:55--nearly the halfway point for the trick-or-treating window in our town--I took a tally of what remained (excluding, once again, the 100 Grands and the Butterfingers). Here's what was left:

Snickers = 11 (79% remaining)
Kit Kat = 3 (21% remaining)
Milky Way = 7 (50% remaining)
Crunch = 3 (21% remaining)
Tracey's candy = 43% remaining


Yorks = 7 (50% remaining)
3 Musketeers = 5 (36% remaining)
Renée's candy = 43% remaining

OH SNAP!

Although it's still anyone's game in terms of statistics, so far anecdotal evidence unfortunately appears to support the hypothesis that Yorks are "the worst candy ever," as I watched one little boy pick up a Yorks, realize what it was, debate putting it back, decide it would be rude, and put it into his bag with a palpable mixture of disappointment and vague resentment.

Things really got interesting around 7:15, when a group of around 30 kids traveling in what can only be described as a herd descended upon my doorstep. Two little girls argued over the last Yorks in the basket--score one for Yorks!--and, as a side note, about a quarter of the group went absolutely ga-ga over the Butterfingers, saying we were the first house to have them. Weird.

Needless to say, at 7:20 the breakdown of remaining candy was dramatically different.

Snickers = 1* (< 1 % remaining)
Kit Kat = 0 (0% remaining)
Milky Way = 4 (29% remaining)
Crunch = 1 (< 1% remaining)
Tracey's candy = 11% remaining
*There were actually 2 Snickers of the original 14 remaining, but the package was wide open so I removed it from the basket. I'm many things, but I'm not the sort of person to feed children suspicious candy bars.

Yorks = 0 (0% remaining)
3 Musketeers = 1 (< 1% remaining)
Renée's candy = < 1 % remaining

At this point, we were running low on candy, so I had to add a few bars. I was all out of Snickers and Kit-Kats, though, so I just added 2 candies each of Milky Way, Crunch, Yorks, and 3 Musketeers. (All future percentages for those candies will therefore be calculated using a total of 16 candies instead of 14, because that's how math works. I think. I was an English major and we're talking about Halloween candy; you should really just take all of this with a grain of salt.)

After the giant pack of York-loving children departed, the rest of the night was pretty quiet, although I did have this gem of a conversation with three of the last trick-or-treaters of the night, all of whom were probably under seven or eight years old:

Girl: Are there any more Kit-Kats?
Me: No, not anymore. We had some earlier, but they went really quickly.
Girl, with the air of a defense attorney cross-examining a witness: But there WERE Kit-Kats at one point?
Me: Yeah, but they're all gone now.
Boy #1: Did the big kids get 'em?
Me: I think so.
Boy #2, arriving on the scene: I like Kit-Kats, too.
Me: I know, they're good! But we don't have any more.
Boy #2: I think I've got a Kit-Kat in here somewhere.
He rummages through his candy bag, finds a Kit-Kat, and holds it up for inspection.
Boy #2: There it is!
Me, at a loss: Yep, that's a Kit-Kat...!
Awkward pause as Boy #2 combs extensively through all the remaining candy in the basket.
Boy #2: I don't really like any of this candy.
Me: No?
Boy #2: Yeah. I guess I'll just...
He picks up a 100 Grand, puts it back, ignores his friends calling him impatiently from across the yard, picks up a Butterfinger, hesitates, starts to put it back, then bags it with a "what the hell, why not?" sort of attitude.
Boy #2: Thank you!
Me: ...!

Kids, man. They're priceless.

By the end of the night, the numbers were as follows:

Snickers = 0*/14 (0% remaining)
Kit Kat = 0/14 (0% remaining)
Milky Way = 1/16 (< 1 % remaining)
Crunch = 0/16 (0% remaining)
Tracey's candy = 0.01667% remaining
*Still one Snickers technically left that's not counting toward the total. But let's be real, it probably would have gone anyway.

Yorks = 0/16 (0% remaining)
3 Musketeers = 1/16 (< 1% remaining)
Renée's candy = 0.03125% remaining

CONCLUSION
So Tracey beat me, but only barely. We both finished with less than one percent of our candy remaining, and the thing that kept me from winning, it really must be noted, was NOT a Yorks Peppermint Patty. I can only conclude that Yorks are not the worst candy ever, and my family really needs to have more faith in my candy-picking abilities.

Now...here's to a statistics-free November!

And that's how nerds do Halloween.