You’ve heard the expression “less is more.” But when it comes to pizza, we subscribe to the theory that “more is more.” In fact, by using math you can solve the Pizza Equation. Simply put, if you’re buying small pizzas instead of buying the large … you’re wasting money.
Read on and check out this video from ASAP Science to see the Pizza Equation in action.
The math of why a large pizza is a better deal comes down to the following: A pizza is a circle and the area of a circle increases with the square of the radius.
When determining the area of a circle, we use the formula above … the radius squared, times pi.
- Let’s say you’re trying to determine the difference between an 8-inch pizza vs. a 16-inch pizza.
- The smaller pizza’s radius would be four inches (the diameter is 8 inches, the radius is half that).
- If we then solve for the area, we find that an 8-inch pizza has an area of about 50 square inches.
- Now, when compared to the larger 16-inch pizza, you may think that the size would be doubled.
- But you’d be wrong. In fact, with a radius of 8 inches, the larger pizza has an area of about 200 square inches.
With the larger size, you're getting four times more pizza. And generally, the difference in price between a small size pizza and the large, is not going to be four times greater.
NPR analyzed pricing data from nearly 3,700 pizza joints around the country and determined, by crunching the data on more than 74,000 prices, that in order to get the same amount of pizza you get in a 16-inch pie, you’d have to spend an extra $2.35 on 14-inch pizzas or an additional $16.41 on 8-inch pizzas.
You would have to buy roughly six 8-inch pizzas to get the same amount as one 20-inch pizza, but the six smaller pizzas would cost $30 more.
Now, this only applies to the price – value ratio. If you’re talking calories, that’s another equation for another time…
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