sandwich

imagine you're making a sandwich with two spreads in it (say peanut butter and jelly).

so you take 2 slices of bread out of the bread bag, call them A and B, where A is the top one.

now you have four surfaces on which to put on 2 spreads right? call them A1, A2, B1, and B2, where the '1' surfaces were facing the top of the bag. which would you use?

so i've observed people doing this, and most of the time, you get folks spreading peanut butter onto A1, putting that slice somewhere else, spreading jelly on B1, and then putting the two slices together.

this is clearly not the best procedure. A2 and B1 are the slices with exactly the same shapes, so what you should do, to avoid peanut butter/jelly on fingers while eating the sandwich, is to flip slice A before spreading peanut butter on its lower side, then flip it back to recreate the sandwich.

this is a particularly worrisome problem towards the end of the loaf, where the size tends to taper off more significantly, and A1 >> B2.

now, i admit that i'm working with a very small sample of data, and it could be that all the smart people reading this blog do this automatically. do tell me if you do.

what i want to do, though, is set up a small booth in houston hall with a sign that says MAKE A SANDWICH FOR RESEARCH: $5, and get people to (a) make the sandwich, and (b) report their gpa.

i have no idea where i'd publish this if there were a difference.