For quite some time, as you'll see on the graph pictured below (in two parts), the total pizza order was a rather dull oscillation between 144 slices (18 whole pizza pies) and 152 slices (19 pies). Week after week, 144 or 152, 152 or 144. You could set your watch by it. It was like, I don't know, jazz music or Blue's Clues or driving on Interstate 65 in northern Indiana or something. As the graph shows, the median (the middle value when the data points are ordered) stayed within a very constrained band of numbers, and the range (the difference between the lowest and highest values) remained absolutely, boringly, even mindnumbingly consistent.
[Note that the number of slices actually ordered by lower school students doesn't match the number of slices we actually buy. Why is that, I wonder? Hmmm...]
Then, all of a sudden one Friday, the number of slices ordered took a nosedive. Fell off a cliff, or at least rolled down a slope, as the graph makes clear. Woke us all up, I tell you that. Boom, all the way down from the 150 region to...104. 104! Think of it! The median didn't change (why it didn't was food for thought for some of the students), but the range changed, oh boy did it ever.
Why would things be so different this week? I asked the gathered third and fourth grade children (after swearing to secrecy Ellen's class, which had handled the order and therefore knew the answer). What possibilities do you think there are?
They came up with four:
A) There were a LOT of kids out with swine flu.
B) Some of the classes were on a field trip.
C) The pizza place ran out of pizza partway through.
And
D) Not very many people were hungry for pizza that day.
I wonb't tbell ybou thbe rbeal ansbwer. But wbith anby lbuck, yobu cban gbuess.
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