The Controversy Around the "Guess the Number of Pretzels in the Jar" Contest Winners

The Data Team was thrilled that 122 members of our community submitted guesses to our “Guess the Number of Pretzels in the Jar” contest!

Congratulations to Abby Sharpe for guessing that there were 234 pretzels in the International Love Data Week jar. This was only 2 short of the true answer: 236 pretzels! Abby wins the jar and a gift card to Tatte.

We also held a second contest, to get your statistical juices flowing. A second question asked: “What will be the average guess for the number of pretzels in the jar?” Because of an hilarious and informative bit of “stats hacking” by one of the contestants, we have decided to award two winners:

The first “guess the average” winner, whom we are calling the “Doing What We Intended” winner, is Mariam Alasania who guessed that the average guess would be 189 pretzels. This is only two below the true average of 191, if we exclude the guess of one person, described below. Mariam will also win a gift card to Tatte.

But the other, true, winner, whom we dub the “Leet Haxor” winner, is Andrew Jakab. Andrew, in a display of statistical know-how and cleverness, guessed 10 octillion (that’s a 1 followed by 28 zeros!) We asked ChatGPT to help us understand this guess: If you stacked 10 octillion pretzels on top of one another, it would span the entire observable universe. Or, to bake 10 octillion pretzels, a massive pretzel factory the size of earth would require 7 times the age of the universe. So, Andrew’s first guess was VERY wrong.

But, Andrew also guessed that the average guess for all of the submissions would be, surprise, 10 octillion! He wasn’t far off! The actual average was 82 septillion. Although Andrew was 122 times too high, he was septillions closer than the next highest guess, of 645. We will award Andrew a Tatte gift card as well, and thank him for truly embracing the spirit of International Love Data Week!

For the Data Team Scavenger Hung, Lauryn McClung won a $15 Dunkin’ gift card

Congrats to our Winners and thanks to all who participated!!