(part 2 in a series)
A few days ago I was eating at Waffle House when I discovered an interesting claim. According to my receipt, there are over 3.5 million ways to enjoy Waffle House Hash Browns.
That seemed high. According to menu, there are only nine options for hash browns - scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, diced, topped, capped, peppered, and country - and three sizes, regular, double, and triple. I did my best to recall Probability and Statistics, the last college math course I took at Georgia Tech, and came to the conclusion that there should be 9! * 3. I entered that into Google on my iPhone, and got my result: 1,088,640.
I want to make a quick side note here: Google is a great calculator. I use it all the time, yet I’ve found that almost nobody knows this amazing feature. You can enter any mathematical statement into Google and it will evaluate it. It’s also great for all types of unit conversion, from “12 miles per hour in meters per second” to “1337 megabytes in bits” and even currency conversion based on current exchange rates.
But I digress. Based on my calculations, which I later discovered to be wrong (damn you Tech!), Waffle House was 2,411,360 hash brown possibilities shy of their claim. After consulting with my waitress, who claimed she didn’t know about any other off-menu options, I resolved to call Waffle House customer service the next day.
What follows is a video playlist of my interaction with Waffle House. Be prepared for nerdiness.
Also, as promised on the video, here’s the spreadsheet they sent me:
Ordering with a British accent. Classic.
I don’t know who you are, but my friend showed me your blog b/c of your grammar post since I’m a bit of a grammar nerd. Anyway, just wanted to say your stuff is great and nerdily hilarious. I also think you might have too much time on your hands.
I’ve actually ran those numbers in Waffle House before and came to the same conclusion. What I find to be interesting is that there’s really no need to inflate the numbers from your calculated 1,000,000+ to their 3,500,000+.
In the end, what’s the mental impact of the difference between those two numbers when taken in the context of picking a 4:00 AM breakfast joint? I’d say that the difference approaches zero. One or three and a half million, either way, it’s an impressive number of hash brown combinations and leaves Waffle House in undisputed first place in the hash brown customizabiltiy race.
Yet, there’s still someone out there who has to invent bogus ways of cooking hash browns just to artificially raise the number of possible combinations for a net impact of near zero.
Great post, you’re in my RSS reader now.
I think it’s much worse than you thought.
Each option is binary - either you get it or you don’t.
So the total number of combinations isn’t 9! but 2^9 = 512.
Then multiply times 3 for small, medium & large = 1,536.
In other words, almost 3.5 million shy of 3.5 million.
-M.
Okay, while their calculations may be technically correct, who in their right mind would put both Thousand Island and Blue Cheese dressing on their hashbrowns? And this list is a little hokey. It sounds like they’re just making stuff up. Where’s mustard? Where’s the syrup? Where’s the bed of toast? Those three additions alone would bring them up to around 28 million ways. I guess even the morons over in the Waffle House marketing department have their limits.
Based on the menu, there’s only 1,536 permutations. And the question remains, why exaggerate? 1,536 is still more than I can eat… which is saying a lot.
Thanks for keeping the House honest.
-M.
One last thought… I promise. I wonder what would happen if you went in to a Waffle House and order all 17 “options” dry light triple hashbrowns. What would they say? How much would it cost? Is this _really_ possible in practice? Inquiring minds want to know.
Hmmmmmmm.
-M.