Maths

How not understanding fractions saved the Quarter Pounder!

McDonald's recently celebrated a 50-year milestone. The creation of the Quarter Pounder.  Our fast food world could be very different if people had a better understanding of fractions!

To start off our year, our students in Years 3 and 5 have been learning about 3 key concepts that really assist in learning mathematics.

1 – the ability to be fluent with numbers.  e.g. that 7 can be made by adding 3 + 4, 8 – 1 or that half is 3.5 etc.

2 – the ability to recognise patterns of numbers.  Are they increasing or decreasing and by what value?

3 – the ability to understand how maths can be applied to real life scenarios.  How can this maths help me?

So, how does a McDonald’s burger help illustrate the third point?  Well, about 50 years ago, a franchise owner called Al Bernadin felt there was something missing in the McDonald's menu. Specifically, they needed something to offer people who wanted a 'higher ratio of meat to bun.' So, he created a burger with a pre-cooked weight of just over four ounces. He called it the Quarter Pounder. Which was much better than his other option - the big Four Ouncer.

The Quarter Pounder was an instant success. The name was trademarked. And it became a McDonald's menu item worldwide.

Interestingly, A&W Burgers decided to give the Quarter Pounder some competition in the 1980s. So, it introduced the "Third-of-a-Pound Burger." It was priced the same as the Quarter Pounder but with a third of a pound of beef, instead of just a quarter pound. It even outperformed the Quarter Pounder in taste tests.

But nobody bought it.

When A&W ran focus groups to try and figure out why, the reason was simple.  More than half the people in the focus groups questioned the price of the third-pounder. They wanted to know why they should have to pay the same price for a third of a pound as they did for a quarter pound at McDonald's. They said A&W was overcharging them. They thought that they were being ripped off.

People genuinely thought a third of a pound was less than a quarter pound. Because 3 is less than 4.

Our students have also been learning some new maths fluency games, such as Greedy Pig where each student has to decide on how much risk they wish to take to get a higher score. When the Greedy Pig is rolled if they haven’t sat and saved their score they receive no points!  It’s a lot of fun and the excitement and disappointment is clear for all to see if the dice roll doesn’t go their way.