PCS calculations

Moving requires all sort of numbers and computations for various units of measurements - days, weeks, months, dollars, pounds, etc.  Here is how basic math reared its ugly head today:


Zac: "Dog food is on sale next week.  It's a 40lb bag.  Is that going to be too much?"
Me: [blink blink] [pause]  "Yes?"
Zac: "Too little?"
Me: "I have no idea."


Zac and I head back to the mainland the third week of October, but Toivo and Zoe are going to stay back on Oahu a friend until we settle in San Diego.  Once we get situated, she will take the dogs to the vet for their health certificates and then send them on their way to us.  Based on our plans, this might not be until the second or third week in November. We want to make sure that we have enough food (and in Toivo's case, medications) to get them through their prolonged stay in Hawaii, but we also don't want to have so much food that it goes to waste.


Zac and I decided to figure out how much food the dogs were going to need.  This meant we needed to know how much they consume in a day, how much we have remaining and how much we'll need to get us til the middle of November.  We pulled out the kitchen scale and weighed out how much the dogs get in a day.  Two dogs, fed twice daily = about 10oz.  Ok.  How much food is left?  By scooping it all out we figured we have about 10 days right now.  Let's look at the calendar.  How many weeks will we need after the 10 day's worth of food we have now?  About seven weeks.  Ok, so 10 oz of food a day for seven days is 70oz per week.  Ten weeks of 70oz is 700oz.  700oz is a little less than 44lbs.  So it looks like we're going to be getting the 40lb bag, but we will probably have to get a smaller bag right before we leave to make sure we've got enough.  Yay math!


If you're wanting me to show my work, let me assure you we did, indeed, pull out a pencil and a piece of scrap paper and did the math manually with appropriate units of measurements labeled.  It's at moments like this that I realize that for most of the general population, math beyond basic algebra is unnecessary. Understanding how to solve real-life problems is important. Calculus?  Less so.