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MUNGRY MATH
| For many years a favorite poem among our Lower School crowd has been Hungry Mungry by Shel Silverstein from his collection titled "Where the Sidewalk Ends", published in 1976. The poem tells of a ridiculously voracious young man, named Mungry, and his crazy exploits in eating. |
After reading the whole poem for the umpteenth IZE=4> mathematical fascination with the sheer amounts of stuff Mungry eats. Of course we yield to this temptation. We ask ourselves some questions about the first verse where Mungry is eating conventional foods - and a lot of them! |
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While reading or listening to the poetic cadence of Hungry Mungry is superb, we cannot pick up the numerical facts from our reading or listening - we must TABULATE his consumption. We use spreadsheet software to build our table but obviously a pencil and paper can be used with the same result. |
PROCEDURE
| The "HM Quantity" column in the chart below shows the poetic description of the food eaten. It is immediately noticeable that we must examine some items so that we will be dealing with standardized and therefore comparable values. Our class discussions as to suitable serving amounts can be very interesting and variable from grade to grade. |
So in the "Servings" column uncertain amounts such as "one shank" or "some" have been converted or translated into a number of servings and amounts considered appropriate, for instance a dozen tomatoes could surely be reapportioned to six servings. A bowl of grits must contain "zillions" of corn kernels (also defined by some students as "infinity") and to be reasonable we convert it to two servings per bowl.. |
The remaining columns in the following table show the grouping categories we chose and the corresponding values for this young man's disgusting consumption. |
| Hungry Mungry's Supper Feast | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Food Name | HM Quantity | Servings | Soup | Seafood | Meat | Dairy | Vegetable | Dessert | Drinks |
| Mushroom Soup | one bowl | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Roasted Pork | one slice | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Stewed Tomatoes | one dozen | 6 | 6 | ||||||
| Devilled Eggs | 27 | 13 | 27 | ||||||
| Shrimps | 15 | 5 | 1 | ||||||
| Baked Potatoes | 9 | 9 | 9 | ||||||
| Chicken Legs | 32 | 32 | 32 | ||||||
| Lamb | one shank | 17 | 17 | ||||||
| Boiled Ham | one ham | 21 | 21 | ||||||
| Grits | two bowls | 4 | 4 | ||||||
| Black-Eyed Peas | some | 2 | 2 | ||||||
| Chocolate Shakes | 4 | 4 | 4 | ||||||
| Angel Cakes | 8 | 32 | 1 | 32 | |||||
| Custard Pies | 9 | 54 | 54 | ||||||
| Muenster Cheese | some | 6 | 6 | ||||||
| Tea | ten pots | 20 | 20 | ||||||
| SERVINGS | 1 | 1 | 71 | 33 | 21 | 86 | 24 | ||
| TOTAL | 237 |
OBSERVATIONS
| We can see how useful tables are in answering the strictly numerical questions. |
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When it comes to answering comparative questions and trend questions we do better using CHARTS. |
Yes, the Hungry Mungry data simply begs for PIE CHART REPRESENTATION. |
| Please notice that the pie chart labels for Soup and Seafood are omitted because those amounts are so relatively tiny. |
A Hungry Mungry BAR CHART is also useful. |
| The Bar Chart shows more clearly the presence of Soup and Seafood. |
MORE OBSERVATIONS
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CONCLUSION
| Mungry would do himself a huge favor by checking the following sites. |
NOTE: If "Where The Sidewalk Ends" is not among your available reading materials this charting approach will work with Old MacDonald (categories such as color, size, number of feet, etc.) or The Twelve Days of Christmas (animals, humans, musicians, dancers, men, women). |
We will leave the remaining verses of the poem unexamined (numerically, that is) and we always, always, thank Shel Silverstein for the sheer fun and enjoyment his writings give us. |
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