This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz
by Paul Brown.
Original Post: Measuring Meal Utility and Grad School Food Skills
Feed Title: mult.ifario.us
Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MultifariousCategoryJava
Feed Description: Software. Business. Java. XML. Web Services.
On a purely frivolous note, since my wife was visiting family this week, I had to dust off some of my graduate school cooking skills, and I remembered an old result that I'm sure is not original. Dinner is an optimization problem to maximize the utility defined byutility = (# meals produced) / ( (1 + cost) * (# dishes) )where cost is the total cost and dishes is the total number of dishes (pots, pans, etc.) required, subject to the constraint:dinner = protein + carb + vegetable(This was before Atkins...) For example, ramen has a food utility of 1/ (1.25*2) = 0.4, but it violates the constraint unless you throw in an egg and some frozen vegetables. (Baked chicken, brown rice, and broccoli is a better choice, as it requires 3 dishes but produces 2-3 meals.)I didn't think about it at the time, but even with the cost of charcoal or propane, using a grill produces a lot of optimum meals because it reduces the number of dishes required for the meal.
Previous Topic
