06/04/2022

In a column in Folha, Viana comments on his "allergy to mathematics".

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Reproduction of Marcelo Viana's column in Folha de S.Paulo

The famous scientist Stephen Hawking recounted that when he was writing " A Brief History of Time ," his editor warned him: "Don't mention any mathematical formulas. Every formula will cut sales in half!" Hawking followed the advice, and the book became one of the biggest bestsellers in the history of scientific literature.

There are many other examples of how an "allergy" to mathematics can lead to problems. A friend told me about two very curious cases in the advertising industry in the United States.

In the 1980s, the A&W company launched a new hamburger to compete with McDonald's popular Quarter Pounder. The Quarter Pounder weighs 1/4 of a pound (about 110 grams), and the campaign for the new sandwich emphasized that, for the same price, it contained 1/3 of a pound of meat. It was a huge failure because many people thought that 1/3 is less than 1/4, since 3 is less than 4. Why pay the same for less meat?

A&W and its advertising team thought long and hard and came up with a brilliant solution: they replaced the A&W 1/3 with the new A&W 3/9, which weighs 3/9 of a pound. We know that 3/9 is the same as 1/3, of course, but to many buyers it seemed much larger, since 3 and 9 are bigger numbers.

The A&W 3/9 was a success, to the point of selling out from time to time. Whenever this happened, the company replaced it with the A&W 2/6 (that's right, 2/6 of a pound…) without charging anything extra!

The other case is even stranger. The Miller company launched Miller64 beer, which has only 64 calories, to compete with the leader in the super-light beer segment, Bud Light Next 80, which has 80 calories.

But market research showed that a large portion of potential customers thought 64 was more than 80, so the new beer would actually be heavier than the other! How would you resolve such a dilemma, dear reader?

To read the full text, visit the newspaper's website.