The Pete's Value Proposition: The Geometry of Pizza

 

Geometry class, 10th grade, early November 1985. We talked about surface area. Later that month, I aced the midterm and forgot the material almost instantly. "How would I ever use this JUNK in real life EVER?," I declared in an adolescent huff. Well here it is, in real life.

Pete's "large" pizza is 18" in diameter, and the "small" is 14" wide. We've always known the value of an 18" pizza, because we know exactly how much dough, cheese, sauce, and toppings go onto every one of our pizzas. And we use top-quality ingredients not seen anywhere else in the market. Yet we regularly get called "expensive," "pricey," and other things not appropriate to print on a family website. But if we dust off our 10th grade geometry, the answer becomes very clear.

Using the formula for the surface area of a circle, (pi) * radius squared, we can figure out how many smaller pizzas would fit into one 18" pizza.

 

One 18-inch pizza equals:

• 1.25 16" pizzas
• 1.65 14" pizzas
• 2.25 12" pizzas
• 3.25 10" pizzas
• 5 (FIVE!!) 8" pizzas

So that's the geometry part of the Pete's Value Proposition. Having fun yet? How about a word problem!

Q: If "Pops" sells an 8-inch "personal pizza" with tomato and mozzarella for $9.95, how much would you have to pay Pop to make it 18 inches wide?
A: (9.95)(5)=$49.75

Q: If "Pops" also offers a 12" pizza and calls it "large," charging $15.50 for it, how much do you have to offer him to get him to make it 18 inches wide?
A: (15.50)(2.25)=$34.88

Q: If Pete's sells an 18" cheese pizza for $18.95, would you still call it expensive?

If you do the math, looking at the prices charged by the many excellent pizzerias in Washington DC and noting the size of the pie they deliver to your table, one thing is clear: the smaller the pizza, the more you get taken to the cleaners.

Note: the numbers in this word problem come from an actual gourmet pizza restaurant in Washington DC, although we've given it the name of a little storefront pizza shop in our childhood hometown, just for kicks.