Practical Applications of Mathematics

[Archmage144]

I drew up a spreadsheet tonight because I needed to prove to my mother that purchasing a meal plan at Butler was a rip-off. For those of you who attend Butler (two other people on this forum at last count) or otherwise go to college and have similar situations to work around, allow me to summarize the data for you.

Butler offers 21, 18, 15, and 12 meals/week plans. No matter which plan you choose, it costs approximately $2,000. Each plan also offers you "munch money" that can be spent whenever (regular meals can only be used at certain times). You get $50, $75, $100, and $125 with each plan, respectively. There are 110 days in a semester within which to use your meals. You can only use three meals at max during one day, and you can only use one per "meal period," a time which is measured by whether the cafeteria is serving breakfast, lunch, or dinner. 110 days = 15.71 weeks.

If the "bonus" money you get is treated as cash back and subtracted from the cost of the plan, and the total cost is divided by the number of total meals purchased, you can determine the price per meal. Easy and obvious. It should be noted at this point that if you don't have a plan (if you commute to campus, for example), that purchasing a buffet-style meal in the cafeteria upstairs costs $6.25. A meal downstairs, in the food court, costs anywhere from $4 to just over $6 depending on what you want.

Unless you get 21 meals per week and eat every single one, you are getting ripped off. Big surprise.

At 21 meals, each meal costs $5.89. But the next plan down costs $6.79 per meal. At 15 meals, which is enough to keep me fed since I usually don't eat breakfast (as breakfast is only served between 7 and 9, and I always have a class), I was paying $8.04 per meal. That is not cool.

If I paid in cash for every meal I ate in the cafeteria and continued my normal eating habits, I would spend only $1,374.63. This is $620.38 less than the cost of a meal plan.

Incidentally, the time span in question is roughly four months. If I were to take the $2,000 invested in a meal plan and put it towards groceries, I could spend $17.85 per day on foodstuffs. At that price, I could afford to have steak for dinner every night.

So. Who else goes to college and has a meal plan or has dealt with meal plans, and how does yours stack up in terms of student ass-rapery? <p>

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[The Great Nevareh]

1: That's why I don't get a meal plan and just buy everything. Since I barely eat during the school year as it is, I can only save money.

2: You have broken one of the cardinal rules of mathematics: Thou shalt never use mathematics for any practical purpose. Thus, I sentence you to 100 hours of listening to vehement lecturers debate over Liebniz versus Newton. These lecturers come standard with shoddy powerpoint presentations, an entourage of brown-nosers, and a textbook that is not only incomprehensible but highly advertised as required reading by them because they wrote/contributed heavily to it. <p>[---------------------------]
"There is great disorder under Heaven, and the situation is excellent."
-Mao Tse-Tung

"I eat the talking bees because I am George Washington Christ"
-From "Bob the Ball"</p>

[Idran1701]

I feel bad for Nev. He must have had some horrible math teachers/professors. :( <p>

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"Never let your morals get in the way of doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
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[Zemyla]

My meal plans are roughly $800 and allow you to get all-you-can-eat meals. However, they only allow that at relatively inconvenient times.

If I get enough money, I just might do that. <p>-----
Do not taunt Happy Fun Zemyla.

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[FlamingDeth]

That's one of the reasons that I don't live on campus. I don't know about anywhere else, but at UAF, living on campus requires that you buy one of the retarded mealplans. The ones that would be the cheapest on a "per-meal" basis, as you mentioned, would involve not using a lot of the money spent on it, and the closest one to being "practical" works out to about $9 a meal. For some of the worst food on the planet. Ick.

But yes. Not-on-campus = BETTAR. <p>
<hr width="50%"><center><span style="font-family:comic sans ms; font-size:x-large;">AVAST!</span></center></p>

[Ganonfro]

My meals are similar to Brian's. Same thing with meals being set in certain limited times for breakfast,lunch, and dinner, the extra cash and such. Currently my meal plan is set to 10/week, with 300 on Flex spending (only for food). Finding out that I only pay 35 more dollars to a meal plan with 14/week and 200 Flex is just absurd...

But, my meal plan still is 10/week, for $1530, it totals to spending $95.63/week and $13.66/day. Total rip off.
The other plan for 14/week that I'd be using is $1565, totaling to $97.81/week and $13.97/day. Not the rip off I thought it'd be.

Now, adding in the FLEX to the total price, since you have to use it up each semester, since my school is content with savagely making their students spend every last cent they can on food. My current meal plan is actually $1830, instead of $1765. This changes everything! My meal plan for $1830 turns meals into $114.38/week and $16.34, while my previous plan was $1765 = $110.31/week and $15.76/day.


...Jesus, I'm getting fucked over about 1/3rd more than I expected.... Especially because our meal plans only cover 5 dollars worth of food, where most of the single dishes cost 3.75 and drinks cost 1.30 for a large.

Crap! I'm paying more money to have less meals on my plan! This must go on my list of reasons why I hate Potsdam...

[Will Rennar]

Wow. And I thought MY meal plan sucked. o.o
2 free meals a day (technically 3, but I never have time for breakfast anymore except on weekends, when they don't serve lunch), all for the low, low cost of 1/4 of each paycheck. <p>This has been your daily interrupted moment of Zen.</p>

[not Tiny Harddrive]

Meh, I spend £5 on bread, cheese and ham, and that's my lunch sorted for 2 weeks. Last year I reckon I didn't spend more than £15 pounds on all my food in a week.

I didn't lose weight, I swear. >_> <p>"Hens love Rosters, Geese love ganders, everyone else loves Ned Flanders!"</p>

[The Great Nevareh]

My math professors have been grand. However, the lecturers I've heard on the subject of Newton v. Leibniz were not. And they plugged their textbooks. <p>[---------------------------]
"There is great disorder under Heaven, and the situation is excellent."
-Mao Tse-Tung

"I eat the talking bees because I am George Washington Christ"
-From "Bob the Ball"</p>