I don't know how many people on HN have even been in an A&W since they've been dying for more than a decade and closing franchises, but I have. The store wasn't clean, the food was overly greasy but not in a good way, and they didn't properly season the fries. I'm not really a fan of McDonald's, but one thing I'll give McDonald's is that I've rarely been in a store that's dirty, and the food is the same whether I'm in downtown NYC or in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so I know exactly what I'm going to get, not wondering when the last time was that they changed the fry oil or whether they ran out of salt.
When it comes to fast food, the order of importance is pretty much: 1. Consistent, 2. Fast, 3. Cheap, 4. Quality. A&W tried to compete on quality and failed because the quality wasn't there, first of all, and because they failed to be consistent, fast, and cheap, which are more important. McDonald's is the absolute best at #1. In the US, Wendy's is superior to McDonald's for a nationwide chain in quality, but the consistency is more variable, so McDonald's rules. Burger King is faster and cheaper, but the consistency is variable, so McDonald's rules. McDonald's understands the ordering of priorities here, and so they win, it's that simple.
McDonald's understands that not everyone will like McDonald's but that almost nobody finds it outright objectionable and many people love it. As long as they keep doing the same thing in every single store or franchise across the country, McDonald's is always a safe choice for stopping into the drive-thru due to that consistency.
A&W failed with the third-pounder because they had bad marketing and because they failed to understand the marketplace to achieve product-market fit, not because Americans are too dumb to understand fractions. I'm sure there's /some people/ who don't understand fractions, but the vast majority of people I've met understand fractions and use them in their daily life...
>> A&W failed with the third-pounder because they had bad marketing and because they failed to understand the marketplace to achieve product-market fit,
Right.
>> not because Americans are too dumb to understand fractions.
Wrong. They did research and found that to be a significant factor.
I'm sure there's /some people/ who don't understand fractions, but the vast majority of people I've met understand fractions and use them in their daily life...
That's what I thought years ago when I first heard about this, but you might need to get out into other parts of the world. I see at least 2 kinds of people who will make the mistake 1) People with no math ability (these really do exist) and 2) People who could easily see the difference if they thought about it even a little bit, but 3 vs 4 is smaller at first glance and they never bothered to "think" about it. There are a lot of the second kind of people too. Advertising doesn't usually need people to think, in fact they usually don't want you to do that.
If you're an engineer, this will surprise you. but, the vast majority of people don't know how to normalize data or even why you'd do it in the first place. cost of a burger of 1/3 lbs vs cost of a burger over 1/4 lbs, ( i don't mean to sound insulting) but the fact is: that's waaayyyy to much thinking for most people (it just doesn't come naturally for people to think like that). Personally, I normalize nuritional data on a per 2000 calorie basis. I've even had a doctor question this, until I explained the concept of normalization. It's just not how non engineers/ non scientists are accustomed to thinking.
In many places nutritional data is required to be normalized to 100g. In the US it's "per-serving" which is super subjective and makes everything complicated to compare.
I will say though that I prefer the way you normalize fuel consumption, as distance per units of fuel (miles per gallon), compared to our way of fuel volume per 100 distance units (liters per 100km).
It's been my observation that most of the time most people simply don't think.
I'm not super smart (nor do I in anyway claim to be) but people often consider me to be smart when really it's all down to two things, I think about things other people don't consider and I have endless curiosity about almost everything, I'm an eternal 5 year old constantly asking why.
The problem with comparing 1/3 to 1/4 is that it’s not immediately apparent how much more. I have to do fraction math to figure out how much more and really 1/12th more isn’t exactly meaningful. All of that has to happen in the consciousness brain so it’s not effective marketing
"1/3 to 1/4 is [...] how much more", as is, is ambiguous: on some cultures, "how much more" may depend on the local field of reference (1/3), and on others on the global one (1)
From the article: "More than half of the participants in the Yankelovich focus groups questioned the price of our burger."
They "did research" which found that a handful of people didn't understand fractions, in an unusual group social setting which can easily amplify oddball beliefs if other participants aren't 100% confident.
You can do general polling of a question like this, which will give you actual serious data about whether Americans understand fractions.
A similar thing to 2) is probably the reason seemingly every product is priced $x.99. Everyone is probably aware that's basically the same as $(x + 1).00 but when you're on auto-pilot maybe you still feel like the former is a meaningfully better deal. I mean, it must work given how common the practice is.
I sometimes go to A&W in Toronto Canada, and here I would say its the opposite - A&W is generally pretty reliable and consistent in quality across its locations whereas Mcdonalds can vary quite a bit based on time and location.
Poeple's attachment to certain restaurants is deeper than seeking out the best deal or best taste. Generally I consider an A&W burger superior to Mcdonalds, just as I would consider many boutique burger places superior to mickey ds. Yet the latter has a place in my heart that is really pretty irrational
Its worth noting that the reason this happened is because management bought out the company from Unilever. They were able to switch to a long term vision, then transformed and succeeded.
Just goes to show that the boardroom can absolutely hobble a good management team.
Yes, as an American when I was driving across Alberta I was absolutely astounded by how many A&Ws there were and how nice they seemed. At least in my corner of the US, A&W has a thorough reputation as a cheap, lame has-been that's usually tandemed with other failed fast food brands. The only one I know of in the state regularly garners comments that "wow, that still exists?" when driving by.
In Canada, on the other hand, it seems to be a major and well-liked brand... As much as I found the slogan "American food" very funny given their reputation here.
There used to be a A&W in my home town that finally closed in 2017. For awhile durning some kind of ownership tranfer the franchisees were mostly left high and dry and that place became the best 'fast food' burger in town. I think I remember that the franchise owner basically started buying everything from other suppliers and was only buying a few things from upstream A&W (notably root beer). He pivoted his burgers to compete on quality with the other fast food in town, i think that all went to shit a couple of years later presumably when he either sold or got smacked down the the franchise. Either way it's kind of one of those 'zombie brands' now .. slowly succumbing to economics.
Piling up on the Canadians who like A&W thread. It’s our go-to fast food chain, burgers are of decent quality, their vegetarian option is reasonably good, and the root beer is delicious.
A&W Canada has been downright impressive in being consistently good. Around the level of south-asian owned popeyes franchises. Whatever culture they have behind the scenes, I hope franchises restaurants follow.
"Mismanaged franchise declines" doesn't get smug upvotes, cheap comments, shares and general engagement/popularity among the HN and Reddit demographics the way portraying fast food eating Americans as dumb does.
Every human (and many non-humans, though they may have more difficulty expressing it) who's had to divide things by three and four knows that knows that a third is more than a quarter. People know in the back of their minds that other people know this. But the dumb lizard brain takes over and they can't help but engage with low effort content that is spun in a way that confirms their biases.
Everyone knows that a 1/3 lb burger is larger than a quarter pounder, but unsure why the author never thought the reason people objected to the 1/3lb burger was due to its way too much meat to have for a burger, usually fast food is eaten during lunch and people don't want to have a gigantic lunch that will make them groggy during the 2nd half of the day.
This is supported by the success of the fast-casual chain Fuddruckers which also served 1/3 pound burgers. Their restaurants are configured for large groups. It's the sort of place you take the whole family out to dinner. I don't think anyone was confused by the menu options when they went there.
I have. Here in Canada I'm pretty sure A&W is still growing and doing well. It's very different from the US version from what I've heard. It's one of the better fast food chains IMO, especially of the larger ones. Definitely have the best onion rings.
Not the person you're replying to, just a similarly perplexed Canadian. They're the only fast food joint I go to here in Canada when I'm not traveling (and, really, other than traveling that's maybe 5 to 10 times a year) but their quality here is quite high for the category and price.
> McDonald's understands that not everyone will like McDonald's but that almost nobody finds it outright objectionable and many people love it. As long as they keep doing the same thing in every single store or franchise across the country, McDonald's is always a safe choice for stopping into the drive-thru due to that consistency.
This is the same approach taken by mass-market U.S. beers. The WSJ had an article about this in 2006:
Sitting in the wood-paneled "corporate tasting room" of Anheuser-Busch Cos.' headquarters here, August Busch III surveyed five recently thawed cans of Budweiser beer, representing a quarter of a century of beer history. In the early 1980s, the Anheuser chairman ordered that freshly brewed cans of Budweiser and Bud Light be cryogenically frozen, using technology typically employed in preserving human tissue.
"We wanted to make damn sure we would have the same beer 20 years down the road," said Mr. Busch, 68 years old ... For decades, Anheuser's aim was to develop a beer that would sell across America, one inoffensive enough to appeal to the nation's varied palate.
The article also noted that the references copies showed a gradual decline in hoppiness over the years to make the flavor more middle of the road and inoffensive ... but niche brewers were rising up and about to eat AB's lunch.
> The store wasn't clean, the food was overly greasy but not in a good way, and they didn't properly season the fries.
When they expanded the "new concept" in Texas, guessing 90s-00s, they were often coupled together with a Long John Silvers and they obviously shared the same fryer because I could taste seafood with the fries. If I order fried seafood that's fine I suppose, but not when I'm ordering a burger and fries for a meal from A&W which has no seafood (AFAIK). I think I tried it twice in total and swore it off. All to say, when it comes to consistency, they weren't even trying.
I'm very sensitive to any seafood taste as well, and If I ever detect it in something that's not seafood, I'll just instantly throw the meal away. I'll make an exception for caesar dressing.
As a Texan I'm obligated to concur on whataburger however if I'm being truthful their consistency is all over the map too. I'm pretty sure it's a result of store level execution and management. Oddly enough, I find the best ones are those located in pit stop towns between the major cities. They get enough traffic to stay fresh, they probably have low turnover, and the manager might be making a career of it. That how I rationalize it anyhow.
FWIW Shipley Donuts recently got bought by PE too. I talked to them as a then potential franchisee and they have pretty big growth plans. If you're curious, it wasn't right fit for me now that PE is involved. I was interested as a casual absentee owner, but their growth plan doesn't really have much room for that anymore.
I went into a place known for smoothies/slushes a few months ago. They were out of the frozen yogurt they use in something like half of them. And then tried to sub with almond milk or something.
Some places just can't manage stocking properly, I guess.
There was a sub sandwich place near the University I went to. Went in one day and was told they were out of bread. I figured that meant they were really in trouble, probably fell behind on paying for supplies.
If almost no one ever comes to your restaurant, I imagine it’s pretty hard to hire/pay to hire a good manager who would prevent something like that from happening.
This is especially true overseas. I call McDonald's "American Embassies." When I'm traveling and stressed, tired, hungry and definitely not in the mood for an adventure, I can count on McDonald's to have a menu I can order off, whether I know the language or not, for the food to be satisfying and safe, for the prices to be predictable, for the restaurant to be clean and for the bathrooms to have toilet paper.
The same holds for the large brewing companies. I toured the Budweiser plant in Ft. Collins once, one of the things they were very proud of is the fact that no matter where or when you buy a Budweiser it tastes like a Budweiser. It's no small accomplishment, i can taste the differences between batches with the small brewery stuff i like.
You are so right about AB's consistency. I home-brew and am a certified cicerone. One of the absolutely hardest things to do in brewing is having consistency from batch to batch. One of the things that AB has been able to do to help here is develop innovative food chemistry processes to test ingredients prior to use and a chemical understanding of all the flavor compounds in their product so they can blend different brew batches together prior to packaging to achieve the same ratios of flavoring compounds. Both of which are processes largely unavailable to smaller breweries and home brewers.
Consistency in your product is crucial in the food and beverage industry, because a buyer needs to know what they're getting. If you've already successfully sold them on your product, the repeat sale is only going to happen if they can be assured they're going to get the same thing they liked the first time. Nobody in the industry understands the importance of consistency better than Anheuser-Busch. McDonald's is right there with them on understanding this. Food and beverages are products like anything else, and just like with any product, once you achieve product-market fit, it's important not to make changes that would eliminate or chip away at the fit you have with your customer base.
There's the apocryphal[1] story about the (Trappist? Belgian?) brewer-monk who, when asked about his favorite beer, answered "Budweiser" because of the consistency over millions of gallons.
The linked[1] article below also highlights that "quality light beers are incredibly difficult to brew". So here you have Budweiser/AB excelling on two fronts: a difficult brew and incredible consistency.
I'm reminded of the (perhaps apocryphal) story of how starbucks overroasts its coffee beans to achieve a consistent taste despite having multiple sources for beans (necessary due to its scale). the implication being that they sacrifice the average quality of the finished product to reduce variance.
is there a similar tradeoff in brewing? I do notice fairly obvious differences batch-to-batch in microbrews, but I would still prefer the worst batches of my favorite local beers to any AB product I can think of. are they trading away best/average taste for consistency, or is it more a function of the price point (microbrews being quite a bit more expensive)?
From what I've seen, the brewers at AB are world-class, and they have a very specific and longstanding flavor profile they target. I happen to also not be a fan of Budweiser, but it's been the same for decades and has a very loyal following. They are not brewing to a price point, they spend more on process and verification than any microbrewery to ensure that consistency, although they have introduced the use of adjunct brewing (rice) to make the materials cost fit their price point, and they were able to do it without changing the resulting product taste.
> I'm reminded of the (perhaps apocryphal) story of how starbucks overroasts its coffee beans to achieve a consistent taste despite having multiple sources for beans (necessary due to its scale). the implication being that they sacrifice the average quality of the finished product to reduce variance.
The version I'd heard was people associate the ashy taste and dark roast with higher caffeine, even though it's the opposite.
I'm dubious of the claim that there were enough Americans who don't understand fractions to cause the product to fail. There are a huge number of reasons why a product sells poorly. It may be too expensive. It may not be the right product (too big for lunch). The place where it is being sold may have other issues.
I've only been to an A&W a couple of times, and in both cases the food was notably subpar--it seemed like something I might find in a school cafeteria, the service was slow, and the ambiance was dingy. I also don't like root beer that much so the restaurant has little draw for me. I'm more surprised that they were able to sell enough to stay in business at all. Customer confusion over the size of the 1/3 pounder is the least of their problems.
There is room for variation in consistency. Like McDonald's abroad is not the same in every country. The menu in India is primarily chicken-based. Muslim countries don't even carry a bacon option. The order of importance also varies by region. McDonald's in France has consistently been the best fast food I've ever had. Me and my 20-something coworkers would regularly go while older, upper-management would make fun of us and head over to pricier brasseries for lunch. The complained about the service while we were in and out in 10mins.
Burger King left France as an abject failure 20 years and re-arrived a few years. What changed? Different marketing and leadership. Trying less to be an American company abroad and more of French fast food company that happens to be American.
I wouldn't necessarily call that variation in consistency, but it's interesting you bring up the regional variations at McDonald's (Pizza Hut is one that has some /very/ interesting regional variations as well). This is something that can actually be jarring to Americans when they travel abroad, so much so that it's become something of a meme in travel communities for first-time travelers.
I think it's important to understand that it's pretty rare for a business to fail in its home market and succeed elsewhere, so winning in the home market first is important. A&W's home market and McDonald's home market is the US, and in the US McDonald's is /extremely/ consistent nationwide. It's probably the most consistent restaurant in any category.
> Muslim countries don't even carry a bacon option.
That’s … minor.
I ate at a McDonalds in Marrakech (Morocco), and language and minor local menu variations aside, the food and experience was as close to quintessential as any McDonalds I’ve visited in the elsewhere in the world — including, of course, the US.
That's actually very witty. I do realise though that eating good quality food is not a choice that everyone is free make in the US. Not when a decent carrot costs the same as a cheeseburger down the road [1]
I guess I'm not most people. But if I grill a burger, it's thicker and juicier, is on a better bun of some sort, and I actually like it. Not that I've eaten one in years but fast food burgers are pretty awful in my opinion generally. (The higher end fast casual places, on the other hand, I quite like now and then--usually when traveling.)
They are, because they have to be cooked to death to reduce any chance of food-bourne pathogens. If you took a McDonald's quarter pounder beef patty and cooked or grilled it at home to medium doneness it would be as good as the same thing made with supermarket ground beef.
I worked the grill at McDonalds for a while (admittedly two decades ago) and I disagree. They were frozen when retrieved for cooking and I just don't think those frozen pucks compare to fresher ground chuck hamburgers that occasionally I buy at the grocers.
100% agree, people do not factor in consistency when it comes to fast food, McDonald's is the king of consistency its why they have expanded so fast around the world, also they are a clean restaurant. My expectation in 20 years is mcdonald's to own the burger chain experience globally, I expect Carls Jr.(hardees) Wendys, and A&W to not be around by then.
I don't think A&W gets thought of the way McDonald's or In n Out or other chains do. It just doesn't have the mindshare.
But the McDonald's where I live are all disasters, and the one A&W we had (until recently, when it got replaced by a new VW dealership) was really nice, with table service and frosty mugs.
Most of the mcdonald's experience is pretty consistent - but they need to figure out the bun situation. All too often I get a burger with a nasty, stale bun and it's just gross.
Usually when I'm getting drive-through on a road trip so I can't even go back and complain about it.
What a strange, meandering comment. I'm not really sure what your thesis is. You seem to disagree with the article but the only real rebuttal you offer is "I know people, and everyone is good with fractions," which is more a comment on your interaction bubble than on the American populace.
Everything else is just a comment on A&W in the last decade or two and holds no bearing on the quarter/third pounder topic. The war was won even before your hierarchy of what's important could be standardized over large geographic areas, which is really unclear to me how much it matters/is accurate. feels like conjecture. I could postulate what I think is important to the American consumer, but, again, conjecture.
Now that I think about it, I'm curious about the reliability of this result. While it says that the majority of participants "questioned the price of [the] burger," it doesn't explicitly state that all of these people questioned the price because they thought 1/3 < 1/4. There are also no hard numbers provided in the quotation, and we aren't told anything about the methodology or sample size.
It seems possible that people questioned the price, not because they were confused about fractions, but because they thought that the burger was too low in quality to justify the same price as a McDonald's Quarter Pounder.
[edit: While they say that A&W's burger outperformed in blind taste tests, those taste tests could have had methodological differences (or even just a different sample of the population) that would make it impossible to compare their results to those of the focus groups.]
[edit 2: New Coke also outperformed regular Coke in blind taste tests and was also priced the same. But it was a massive failure, and not because of mathematical confusion.]
A few other points - first, from what I can tell, the third pounder used two 3 ounce patties while the quarter pounder used one 4 ounce patty. So it's possible that it looked like less to people.
Second, the third pounder later changed it's name to the Papa Burger. Though there's a lot of discussion claiming the name "third pounder" hurt sales, I can't find any information about how the change in name effected sales. And even after the name change, it still doesn't seem to have been nearly as successful as the quarter pounder or the whopper.
Third, the way A&W management talk about this makes it seem like if they just offered up a larger burger a good chunk of the population would come to them instead of McDonald's. It sounds like they convinced themselves that "bigger burger" was going to be a hugely successful campaign, but it's likely a lot of people didn't care that much.
I wouldn't be surprised if some people opted for the quarter pounder because they're bad at fractions, but my guess is that there are other, more important factors involved. When choosing a fast food place I doubt the first thing that pops into most people's minds is "how many ounces are in everyone's signature burgers?"
Regarding taste tests, it's common for very sweet drinks to win because they give a small amount to taste. The experience of drinking the normal serving size (in the US) of 12oz is a different beast.
“Third pounder” is also a bad name. “Quarter pounder” has a pleasing rhythm and rhyme to it; “third pounder” doesn’t. “Third” is also easily scanned as “first, second, third,” which “quarter” is not.
Should have called it the “pebble pounder” (0.02 stone—sure, it doesn’t make sense really, but it sounds nice, doesn’t it?) Or the “fifteen’r” (150 grams is about a third of a pound).
"Quarter pounder" sounds like something eaten by a quarterback. "Third pounder" sounds like something eaten by the guy that always comes in third place.
Hey, you're correct. I meant 'fourth'. I also have problems with the word versions of 12th and 40th! By the way, the prefix 'quater-' means multiply by four.
Quater also means multiply by 4. I think they were pointing out that in the same post where you were criticizing them for what was pretty clearly a typo ("forth" instead of "fourth") you also made a typo ("quater" instead of "quarter") that changed the meaning.
Are you making the same typo or using a new word here? Let's get past the typo.
I have never seen the word quarter used to mean multiply by 4. If I was told to quarter something, I would divide it into fourths. When/where were you taught or come to understand that quarter means to multiply. If you quarter something, you went from one item to four items. Is that your understanding of multiplying? You didn't go to 4 items though you went to four 1/4 items.
I just have never in my experience seen quarter mean multiply by 4. If there's something to be learned, I'm up for learning it.
Nobody said "quarter" means multiply by 4. They said "quater" means multiply by 4, which it essentially does [1]. In addition to being a real word, it's also a prefix, e.g. "quaternary" means fourth in order.
You made a typo (quater) in correcting someone's else's typo (forth). Several people have pointed out the irony and have patiently tried to teach you a new word, but you seem to keep reading past all of them without comprehending ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"Forth" is just as easy a typo for "fourth" as "quater" is for "quarter". It's uncharitable to assume someone is using the wrong word when it's just as likely that they made a typo or misspelled the correct word.
Uch I'm not a vegetarian or some health freak but the amount of meat they put in some dishes... It just completely overwhelms the taste.
And at the risk of sounding like an eco warrior terrorist I think meat is too cheap if you can put an entire sausage on a €7 pizza.
There is an environmental cost that isn't priced in- and a health cost too.
"Pile" typically refers to sliced deli meat, i.e. "pastrami piled high". You may confuse the customer into thinking that there's also deli meat on the burger when there isn't.
"Monster burger," "Megaburger," anything at all, really. Nothing's too on the nose in a country that happily ate large pieces of fried chicken in place of the bread in the "Double Down" sandwich.
I agree with GP that "Third pounder" was a terrible name.
“Quarter” has a nice big plosive at the beginning, which really gives it an impact. The “th” in third pounder makes it sound kind of weak in comparison.
Bigger Burger is great! Aliterates, rhyming, and TWO plosives!
I hadn't heard the phrase "quarter pounder" before I came to the U.S. ... Heck we'd had McDonalds for a only a few years. I think there may have been at most a handful of locations through most of that time.
So, one night, we go to McDonalds and I see "quarter pounder" on the menu. It just sounds big ... waaaaayyy bigger than 113 grams (I have no problems converting among different units). But, subconsciously, I had expected something that would take some effort to eat.
I don't think I've had another one in the intervening decades.
strange, I find the "Royale" here still the best on their menu if it wasn't for the no-gluten options I nowadays prefer for digestive reasons. very glad they have those in Switzerland btw., their burger quality here is remarkably consistent and decent IMO.
I read it as the third in the series of "pounder" burgers, which just left me completely confused. I kept trying to recall what the first two "pounder" burgers were, which got in the way of thinking of it as a fraction.
I would have preferred "quarter and twelfth", advertised with a "I'll take an extra twelfth!" catch phrase :)
I recently called out my bank for advertising a "0.10%" savings interest rate, a similar problem I think.
To anyone here it's obvious that this is the same as a "0.1%" rate, but I do suspect that to a not-insignificant proportion of the population, they'd consider "10 > 1", and conclude that this account is better for them than another one offering "0.2%" interest.
I realise this might be a stretch, but to look at it another way, should a bank be allowed to advertise their savings rate as "0.100%" or "0.10000%"?
> It must round the annual percentage yield, the annual percentage yield earned, and the
interest rate to the nearest one-hundredth of one percentage point (.01%) and express
them to two decimal places. (p.17)
Personally, I don't see what the problem would be with 0.10%, doesn't seem misleading in the slightest. I also love how the regulation is called "Truth in Savings", like how could anybody be against it?
You're worried about unfair competition with banks advertising "0.1%" or "0.2%", but with a must rule like this, there wouldn't be any of those competitors. Anyone with the same rate would advertise "0.10%", and anyone who wanted to beat would say "0.20%" (or more likely, "0.11%").
Yes, but #.#.# is not a valid number/decimal/monetary notation. You cannot enter that number into a calculator, and I'm not sure you'd even be able to use that as a valid numerical value in any programming language.
For anyone getting confused that 0.1 == 0.10, then how is that the writer's fault? There are formatting requirements that require a significant digit number of places (scientific notation as an example). I don't know that actually applies to bank marketing material, but it could be a style guide type of thing to keep numbers formatted the same. Either way, it does not change the value of the number. If you misread it, it is not the company's fault. They have provided factual information.
> If you misread it, it is not the company's fault. They have provided factual information.
That’s really not a fair argument given advertising and marketing theory and schemes.
Who knows about this particular case since we don’t know if the 0.10% needed to be compared to other rates like 0.08%, where the formatting would maybe make more sense. But it’s not beyond imagination that someone could try to hook a customer with numbers. It’s done all the time with the whole $8.99 thing.
That's funny timing, as I just mentioned the other day on here that the $.99 vs $1.00 thing was a marketing tactic. However, someone countered that it is a remnant from the old days of forcing the clerk to ring out the customer at the register to make correct change. This was to help avoid the temptation of pocketing the exact dollar amount. A pricing practice that has essentially just stuck around, and possibly repurposed????
Either way, I've learned basic maths. .1 == .10. I would be willing to guess that the average public would not think that .10 > .1, and that this whole confusion is really only for developers that have started using decimal notation in versions where .10 > .1 is true.
As an engineer, the trailing 0 is significant: it indicates with what precision it was rounded to. [0.5, .15) could become .1, with 1 significant digit, but not .10 with 2 significant digits.
Doubtful it matters in this case, but that extra zero can convey extra meaning.
For this reason I tend to prefer the way OpenBSD versions their releases.
They just did 6.9 and the next one will be 7.0.
But this really only works over long periods of time because they only do two releases a year.
It took me a bit to get my head around Linux kernel versioning where the 2nd digit just goes up until they feel like it's time for a new first digit version.
I find normal version numbers pretty simple as a software developer (general population seemed to be buffled by how macOS 10.9 could ever be followed by macOS 10.10) but I always get confused when I see Cyberpunk 2077's version numbers that go 1.22 → 1.23 → 1.3 → 1.31. It just doesn't compute that you go from minor version 23 to minor version 3.
In the financial world we think in bps (units of 0.01%), so it would be standard to write percentages with 2 decimals so you can easily see it's 10bps at a glance.
> I realise this might be a stretch, but to look at it another way, should a bank be allowed to advertise their savings rate as "0.100%" or "0.10000%"?
Yes. Lotteries still exist. What's another tax on the mathematically illiterate?
I would suggest that this is a similar problem, but for a different reason. I'm not choosing a bank because they offer a 0.1%, 0.10% or 0.2% savings interest rate. That is pretty inconsequential.
I'm not the most impressed, I found a bug in their iOS app that would multiply monetary values by 100 when doing various (normal) text editing steps as you input values. I found this by nearly transferring £1000 instead of £10 to a friend. The bug was an honest mistake with `NSNumberFormatter` in the iOS SDK, but I feel like a bank can't make "honest mistakes" at that sort of level.
> Alfred Taubman, who owned A&W at the time, wrote about the confusion in his book Threshold Resistance:
This seems like one of those things that sounds like it is true but is just too convenient.
It is really convenient to put out a story about how Americans are bad at fractions.
In addition, the story originally came from a book the guy that owned A&W wrote. Thus he would have incentive both to create a good story and to deflect blame from himself to American stupidity.
Finally, Americans use the imperial system with cups, etc and there are always a ton of fractions like 1/3, 1/4 in recipes. I bet most American households have measuring cups of 1/3 and 1/4 cup in size and surely know that the 1/3 cup is bigger than the 1/4 cup.
For me this story just seems to good to be true and I would take it with a huge (1/3 pound) grain of salt.
> I bet most American households have measuring cups
You are betting that most Americans cook often and cook using written recipes. That's a very bold assumption.
I expect most people who cook a lot just know "how much is enough", and people who don't cook a lot, well, they just don't cook much if at all. This is compounded by the story being about customers of fast-food joints, who likely fall disproportionately in the "don't cook at all" camp.
Sounds like you’re extrapolating his argument. He said most Americans have measuring cups. I would agree with this to be true. How many people have you met that don’t have measuring cups?
This article is a distraction from what really happened here - insanely bad marketing. Third pounder is a terrible name for a burger. It’s derivative and implies gluttony.
Even outside of the marketing - In the US A&W is essentially considered off-brand fast food. They're already starting from the position of bad branding, and then using an absolutely terrible name for a burger.
Baking often requires decent precision, but stovetop cooking is more foregiving with ingredient mixes, especially if you taste as you go. Some parts of baking are kind of like that too, sometimes you know when you've added enough flour because of how the dough changes and that may not be a specific amount, and you'll know when you've done enough mixing or beating when things change, not by a specific duration, but other items you do need to be specific.
Yeah, especially since the study wasn't even seeking to determine a size comparison. It sounds like they took some random anecdotes from respondents and read the wrong things into them.
If you wanted to find out the actual incidence of this confusion, you'd want a test structured in a really different way from this.
My last 2 years of high school my parents moved to an affluent area where 70% of the kids had a 3.0 or better. I was an uninterested student who admittedly didn’t try very hard. However I did take advanced math in high school. As a result I had to go to community college and transfer into my alma mater in college. (TAMU) when I got there I met a friend group from a rural border town of Texas. Not only did they get academic scholarships they were accepted as first year freshman. However they had little to no grasp of pre-algebra and especially fractions. All of them across the board had no idea how to add/subtract or find LCM.
I don’t think these were dumb people. It did open my eyes to the difference in education quality in the US. I say all of that to say that while anecdotal seems plausible. One very distinct error they made was to see a high number denominator as being bigger than a lower number denominator.
I was a private tutor for quite some time, largely specializing in math. I can tell you with complete sincerity that for most students who have any math issues, fractions were their first stumbling block, and it is typically left unaddressed and festering. Going back, addressing the issue, working toward a full unconscious mastery, then working forward again was the often painful solution.
Math is easy to forget because it often goes unused for years. Pre-algebra was likely taught to these people early, maybe at the age of 11 or 12. It isn't crazy to think they largely forgot about this six years on.
Of course, it doesn't help that mathematics is treated as second-class in standardized testing. You can hand-wave away a low math score as long as you're avoiding a technical major, unlike, say English (assuming America here).
I will admit to having to re-learn how logarithms work nearly every time I use them. And each time, it's pretty obvious based on the websites I see with instructions that logs are taught to like sixth graders.
What's always interesting to me is that in Canada, A&W is almost "premium" fast food. More expensive than the competition, and generally better quality.
They also advertise a lot of "no hormones, grass-fed, cruelty-free, local farmers" etc in their advertising. And they were the first big company to sell the "Beyond Burger."
I don’t know of a single A&W around where I live that isn’t an addon to a more popular chain like KFC. It almost seems like corporate wants it to be an afterthought in America with cheap vibes attached to the brand.
Whatever their plan is, as you mentioned the brand doesn’t resonate well with Americans.
Not to reedit Imperial vs Metric, but I asked an American friend why he preferred the former, and he said it was "more intuitive/natural".
I always found that answer really strange (how can "next exit 3 3/4 miles" be more intuitive than "next exit 3.75 miles"?), and this A&W anecdote kind of proves my point. If the burgers were measured in grams there could be no confusion about 400g being greater than 300g.
People who work in the trades with imperial measures get used to fractions and reasoning about distances in fractions.
I have this 2-5/8 tile I need to split in half. Ok, 1-5/16. Contrast that with 2.625 / 2 = 1.3125.
I'm sure tradespeople who use metric have their own ways of making simple calculations in their heads, but that's an example of why a lot of people who work with fractions prefer them.
That's why metric distances of smallish objects are measured in millimetres. The unit is small enough that you'd pretty much never need more than one decimal place.
You'd think, but that isn't the case. 3/8ths - an extremely common SAE measurement - is 9.5mm. 1/2in is 12.7mm; 1/4 is 6.4mm.
These rounding errors add up. And you can't really get away with sticking to metric because (in the USA) you're bound run into a situation where you have to buy pre-fabbed goods measured in SAE.
So now you need to not only deal with decimal to fraction conversions, but remember the "special cases" like 3/8ths.
When other countries switched to metric they also switched their standard measurements to metric-rounded equivalents. In fact, here in the UK it's a legal requirement that everything (with a few exceptions) must be sold using metric measurements. It's certainly doable.
I don't know how the UK tool companies do things, but I buy and use a lot of German tools and it depends on the brand. Most use metric measurements everywhere, some of them that are more widely distributed like Wera will use SAE measurements in their US/NA literature and metric everywhere else and use geolocation to provide you the appropriate product page or data sheet. It is very common though to see 9.5mm or 12.7mm drive ratchets (I don't really look at tiny stuff, so can't recall ever seeing 6.3mm but I'm sure I have).
Anyone who works with hand tools should already be familiar with both metric and imperial and converting between them at this point, especially in the UK where /both/ measurement systems are used.
I've seen this in action in some US Youtube channels.
To me it feels like those videos of people who lost their arms and learned to play the drums with their feet.
Impressive, but also born out of limitations.
> tradespeople who use metric
2.625 / 2 = Divide each digit by 2 = 1 . 3 1 (2.5) = 1.3125
Most of the time it isn't needed because there isn't a lot of those fractions going around to begin with. The problem isn't the units, themselves (inches, etc). It's that their relation isn't 10.
I find the latter more difficult because you’re carrying numbers to different places and have to reason about the whole number. In the former you can cheat by just halving (doubling, yeah it’s a little counterintuitive) the denominator (ignoring the integer in both examples, since that’s easy in both).
But I will grant you, converting between denominators makes my head hurt in the imperial system. Overall I do still think metric is easier as a whole.
That and in practice, tiles aren't found in dimensions of 26.25 cm, but 20, 25 or 30 cm.
Calculations with those numbers are trivial to make, and when they aren't trivial those numbers are also easier to type on a calculator than fractions.
THIS IS ALL WRONG! When working with tile you level of precision is 1/4 an inch. So the 2-5/8 tile is either 2-1/2 or 2-3/4. Either way divide by 2 and it is 1-1/4 or maybe 1-1/2 - both will fit so who cares.
Significant digest isn't only something they teach in physics, it exists in the real world.
He probably meant the units themselves were more natural, not fractions vs decimal- 1 foot seems like a much more natural unit than 30 cm or .3 meters, 1 cup rather than 250 ml, etc.
>More than half of the participants in the Yankelovich focus groups questioned the price of our burger. "Why," they asked, "should we pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as we do for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald's? You're overcharging us." Honestly. People thought a third of a pound was less than a quarter of a pound. After all, three is less than four!
A&W's third pounder just didnt taste that good, and the fries were mediocre things that reminded me of school cafeteria fries. When I wanted a bigger burger Wendey's had better offerings, and when i wanted a cheaper burger McDonalds had better offerings.
Also the store locations tend to be in not so great spots compared to their competitors, and their food offerings aren't good enough for me to go out of my way. I've also never seen a coupon book for A&W in my mail so that doesnt help.
Cherry to top it all off is the last time i went to one. The root beer tasted bad. (pretty sure the machine was running out of syrup)
"Quarter" have other popular usages that are deeply ingrained in American culture. "Quarterback", "Insert a quarter", "This quarter's results were good", "quart" (measurement), "it's a quarter to one" etc. Actual math aside, it's simply a more familiar word.
Here in Canada I would go so far to argue that A&W is on-par with a lot of the 'fancier' burger joints, if not better. It's a burger I can't eat while driving because it's so juicy it ends up ruining clothes. Their breakfast gives diners a run for their money too imo, I can go in and order the same kind of breakfast (eggs, home fries, bacon, sausage, toast, coffee), all cooked with the same freshness with generally the same ingredients, and be sitting down eating within 5 minutes, where a diner you might be waiting 5 minutes for a waitress to bring you coffee and take an order for your food to come out ~15-20 minutes later.
If A&W US took a few ideas from their sister company here up north, they could seriously find themselves in contention for the best fast food in the country
A&W Canada is kicking ass with plant-based offerings - their veggie burger is delicious, and they're in every rest stop on the highway so I end up eating at least one every road trip
Me too! If I'm on a road trip and looking for a fast food burger, I'm definitely looking for an A&W. McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy's can barely compete with how good the food is at A&W.
Good to know that I shouldn't have the same expectation if I try an A&W in the US!
Someone opened an A&W in my hometown (in northeastern US) at some point and it did terribly and closed. Pardon my highly subjective rant, here, but I don't really understand what the appeal is supposed to be. It seems like just another fast food burger franchise, and one that's gone out of style decades ago. It makes me think of root beer, possibly the least interesting (but most sugary[0]) soft drink. I don't think third pound burgers were their only marketing misstep.
I have fond memories of flirting with the girls who worked at the A&W at my local mall, and getting free hotdogs, in the 90s. I didn't even realize they still existed let alone sold burgers.
Yeah, nah. It was about the quality, not the amount. McDonald's successfully offered a 1/3 pound burger for over a decade until price increases and health culture made it uneconomical.
There's this famous (in Belgium anyway) meme of a Belgian football player that goes "What? 1/3th bonus? that's not enough! I want 1/4th!" (Brilliant keeper though)
A&W used two 3oz patties, and when McDonald's gave the "third pounder" a try they used one 6oz patty. Both of these are 3/8lb, which is 12% more than 1/3lb!
Important to note that that is the weight before cooking, a frozen patty will lose a lot of water weight in the cooking process, so what you end up getting is not a full 6oz.
I pretty much think it has nothing to do with americans sucking at fractions.
Let's face it. Quarter-pounder sounds way better. What does even third-pound mean? When I read the article title I haven't even immediately recognized it as meaning one-third of a pound.
I am sure A&W would fare much better if they introduced "bigger quarter-pounder".
But does quarter-pounder really sound better, or is it that that has always been the name of a burger for us?
The same way The Beatles has always been the name of a band and seems like a great name until you think about it and realize it is the same quality pun name as is common to use for hair salons.
Kinda reminds me of all the early Twitter clones where you could post 141 or unlimited or whatever size posts. Just thinking that mathematically bigger is immediately better in all dimensions seems like a common fallacy.
If you pile more inedible crap on my plate, it's still not a bargain. I don't want it in the first place.
The only A&W I ever tried had taken over the old "Sonic" location, and the comparison made Sonic positively glow in every way. I think they stayed in operation 3 months or so; and they were across the street from the town hospital. The hospital had better food.
As you scroll down the page the article starts filling your browser history. If you scroll all the way down there will be at least 12 items in your history with variations of the page title. It appears to have something to do with how they populate the content below the article.
Knowing how basic American people want their words to be, just call it double-quarter pounder to compete. See, you doubled the word, I know it is not exactly double but who cares.
A double quarter pounder is two quarter pound patties, not one half-pound patty.
And no, the sandwiches would not be equivalent. Two quarter pound patties cook faster, even serially, than one half pounder. Plus, you typically pair each patty with a slice of cheese when making cheeseburgers, so the bread/meat/cheese ratio is completely different.
Is this is a sad illustration of American's numerical illiteracy? Or is this just another argument for doing away with fractions and using a decimal system?
This anecdote is a common one to share when the intent is to bemoan the intelligence or decline of America, but I am starting to think there's more to this story.
Consider a few points:
First off-- being bad at math doesn't mean a general lack of intelligence. I've met plenty of college educated, liberal minded people who openly say that math is their weakness. I've met people with masters degrees who struggle with math. The American student loan crisis should be evidence enough that even college educated people struggle with math.
Second-- the decision to buy a burger is not one that is often carefully measured and considered. It's more of a "do I pull off this highway right now to get this burger?" and in that moment, you're acting more on instinct that rationality. So in that moment yes, 1/3 < 1/4, it's not ideal but our brain makes a lot of other more serious fallacies.
Third-- does anyone here really doubt that if you explained to those focus groups that 1/3 is larger than 1/4 they still wouldn't understand? I don't. I'm sure those focus groups quickly did understand, but the conclusion drawn was that unless it was explained to the broader public, everyone would make the same incorrect initial assumption.
Fourth-- let's just be honest, fractions are confusing. 1/3 > 1/4 is confusing to read and understand quickly. I still can make this mistake from time to time. In the special case of 1/4 vs 1/3 even text is confusing. "Quarter pounder" just sounds larger than "third pounder", "quarter" is a heftier word. If you don't think sound informs meaning, why do so many sports cars have "Z" in their model name instead of "K"? The only way this would be really clear is if McDonalds was calling it a ".25 pounder" and then A&W could launch a ".33 pounder"
In my opinion, wielding this anecdote as an example about the sad state of anything, people, intelligence, America, etc, is ill-informed. If it's unfortunate that American's often confuse fractions, it's even more unfortunate that the confusion is easily turned into a powerful meme that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
I'm convinced that most people who think they are bad at math only think that because math is typically taught in a way that makes it seem tedious and useless.
Not only that, but studying math takes discipline, commitment, and practice. You can’t passively learn math. To a certain extent, mathematical illiteracy is encouraged in society by the standard trope “I’m bad at math.” Almost everyone is bad at math. The difference is that some people understood math is the best way to precisely understand the world and worked to understand it.
I think that's more like it. There have been many attempts to reform math curricula over the years and you still end up with a decent percentage of (at least sometimes otherwise intelligent) students who shrug their shoulders, grit their teeth, and resign themselves to being "bad at math."
Mind you, I also think there are differences in natural aptitude and the degree to wich on connects with the subject. Speaking for myself, I mostly did well through high school math--geometry proofs less so--but mostly just got by on the more advanced math I needed for an engineering degree.
(Then I tutored a group of students in business school who basically handle high school level algebra.)
Is this really an American specific issue? Do people not see problematic levels of innumeracy in other countries among the poor? It's not exactly obvious to observe if you're not waist deep in it. If you're in a moderately well off environment the idea that someone can't do fractions is pretty absurd.
> This anecdote is a common one to share when the intent is to bemoan the intelligence or decline of America, but I am starting to think there's more to this story.
No. Absolutely not. The lowest common denominator of intelligence should not define our approach to mathematical syntax. Fractions are important.
It's technically correct, since am=ante meridiem="before noon". And midnight, of course, comes before noon. You can call it 0am, but then you'd have to call noon 0pm which is weird. Plus, remember most analog watches in the world have a big "12" on top.
There's no reason you have to kill the 12. It would work to just have 1:00 be the first hour of the day, have the day be 1:00-12:59am followed by the same as pm. 1:00pm is "meridiem". No change to analog watches.
Obviously there's zero chance of switching to that at this point from a pragmatic point of view but it does just work out fine.
Given an AM/PM 12 hour system, unless it's obvious from context, the best thing is usually to write noon or midnight. 12am and 12pm in isolation can absolutely be confused. Even if I know the convention, I don't know if the person writing 12am does.
> another argument for doing away with fractions and using a decimal system
so what? you are imagining a law that says you must name your food in decimals, not fractions? What does “doing away with fractions” mean in your imagination?
When it comes to fast food, the order of importance is pretty much: 1. Consistent, 2. Fast, 3. Cheap, 4. Quality. A&W tried to compete on quality and failed because the quality wasn't there, first of all, and because they failed to be consistent, fast, and cheap, which are more important. McDonald's is the absolute best at #1. In the US, Wendy's is superior to McDonald's for a nationwide chain in quality, but the consistency is more variable, so McDonald's rules. Burger King is faster and cheaper, but the consistency is variable, so McDonald's rules. McDonald's understands the ordering of priorities here, and so they win, it's that simple.
McDonald's understands that not everyone will like McDonald's but that almost nobody finds it outright objectionable and many people love it. As long as they keep doing the same thing in every single store or franchise across the country, McDonald's is always a safe choice for stopping into the drive-thru due to that consistency.
A&W failed with the third-pounder because they had bad marketing and because they failed to understand the marketplace to achieve product-market fit, not because Americans are too dumb to understand fractions. I'm sure there's /some people/ who don't understand fractions, but the vast majority of people I've met understand fractions and use them in their daily life...