I just attended a birthday party for a 12 year old. With a typical kid’s chocolate cake, horrible bright blue frosting–and three, yes three, candles: the numerals 3,4, and 5.
I asked why, and the kid’s younger sister(age 8) laughed at me and said, “don’t you know math?”. Of course, the answer is that they add up to 12. Silly me.
The mother explained that she had run out to the nearest store at the last minute, and they had sold out of the numbers 1 and 2, and only had one 6.
So now I have a vital question : who buys the most number-shaped candles?
A minute of googling only showed me sites selling candles.
But I need statistics, and sales data! Help!!!
Now, I’m guessing that every kid in the western world gets a birthday cake with a number-candle on its first few birthdays. No parents would be so mean and cruel as to celebrate their new baby’s first bday without a big “1” for them to be proud of. And also for years 2 and 3. By age 4, the kid might recognize the number himself and give you warm fuzzies by telling you about it. By 5 and 6 the kid knows how old he is and will pick his own candles. I’m going to guess that by age 8 or 9, fewer candles get sold.
And then there are adults, who put number candles on cakes for anniversaries and milestone birthdays. But those usually are numbers ending in a 5 or a zero.
So, my fellow Dopers–tell me the facts! Which numbers are sold the most? There must be some market research that’s been done on this important issue. After all, there’s an entire industry devoted to birthday party stuff.
Dude - it’s all about the first digit, not the second one.
People in their teens and twenties are much more likely to celebrate birthdays with cakes and candles than older people are. That means that 1 and 2 are needed far more often than any of the other numbers. Simple as that.
it is called “Benford law”. the frequency of the first digit are not equal for each number:
1 is at 30%; 2 at 17%; 3 at 12%; 4 at 9%; 5 at 7%; 6 at 6%; 7, 8 and 9 about 5%, decreasing.
it is a logarithmic decay.
Benford’s Law doesn’t necessarily apply. If we assume kids get birthday parties from ages 1-19 and use the numeral candles for each party, the candles used would be :
1 = 11 candles
2-9 = 2 candles
0 = 1 candle
Any deviation from this pattern isn’t due to mathematical law, it’s due to how people change the way they celebrate kids birthday parties.
I married into a family that celebrates birthdays through all ages (usually combining those in any one month), uses numeral candles, and shoots zillions of photos at all family events. It is eye-opening to see how easy it is to date the photos, many of which go back to the late 70s, using the numerals on the cake(s).
“That’s a ‘53’ on Greg’s cake, so the picture must be from 1995.”
I’m guessing that our family candle purchases probably follow Benford fairly closely.
But it isn’t necessarily 1-19. Maybe it’s 1-15, or 1-25. Or maybe sometimes it even goes a full lifespan, and so it’s 1-75 or 80. Average out all of those cases, and you’ll always find that the lower numbers have some amount of edge over the higher numbers, and on average you get Benford’s Law, or something like it.
