Here’s another great story about data, this time on a small scale.
Dan Anderson is a high school math teacher. As part of a class exercise, he had his kids measure the “stuf” content of regular Oreo cookies, “Double Stuf” Oreo cookies, and “Mega Stuf” Oreo cookies.
According to his kids’ calculations, the “Double Stuf” Oreos contained 1.86x as much filling as regular Oreos. Oops.
After his original blog post blew up on the internet, Dan did a more extensive experiment of his own and came up with similar results: “Double Stuf” Oreos contained just 1.89x as much filling as regular Oreos.
The experiments got quite a bit of attention online, and even drew an official response from Nabisco, as covered by ABC News:
A spokeswoman for Nabisco told ABCNews.com the company’s Double Stuf Oreos are made to have double the creme filling as the original Oreos.
“While I’m not familiar with what was done in the classroom setting, I can confirm for you that our recipe for the Oreo Double Stuf Cookie has double the Stuf, or creme filling, when compared with our base, or original Oreo cookie,” the spokeswoman said.
And yet… That’s not what the data actually shows.
Score
Data-driven observations: 1
Nabisco: 0
via BoingBoing