A largely non-related incident

This is really not closely related to rounders or visqueen, but instead occurred at a family reunion, though with a very different family, which I think is enough to justify its posting here.

See, there's this activity at the reunion where a jar is filled with small gum balls and there's a sheet of paper beside it for anyone and everyone interested to guess how many gumballs are in the jar. The closest guesser got the gumballs. Well, I took one look at it and said 260, which was a little lower than the average guess up to that point. More people were in the 300 to 350 range. This seemed too high to me. That's why I instead immediately said 260. This was in the presence of witnesses, and can be verified if it comes to that, but I think at this point that my guess will really be a non-issue if this ever does go to court.

I later decided that if I were to guess, I'd up my guess to 1,000. See, if I won having guessed 260, that's a lot of gumballs. But if I won having guessed 1,000, that's a lot more gumballs. I'd much rather have 1,000 gum balls than just 260. (This is only true in theory, not in practice. I don't like gumballs much.) The higher you guess, the better your prize if you win.

My Dad was holding the jar to count gum balls along two dimensions, and as he later explained he then calculated the total number by estimating hexagonal close-pack of the gumballs, and with his rough counts arrived at the number 247.

Later in the course of events, the winner of the contest was announced. The total was 249, and my Dad, off by only two, had the closest guess. He had left for a few minutes to take care of some work related task, so my Mom accepted the prize - the jar (a typical mason jar, but with a handle on the side)** along with all the gum balls - in his absence.

This is the point where I took pride in being off by just 11 when I hadn't done any counting, thinking, etc.

This is also the point where my siblings and I began to laugh, because not only do I dislike gumballs, but no one in my immediate family likes gum balls. Some of us will occasionally chew gum, but generally not gumballs. And here my father had won 249. (If only he'd guessed 500, we would have had even more gum balls without wanting them.) So my sister decided to pass the jar around among the kids at the reunion to try and get rid of some of the gum while we had the chance. She got rid of maybe 30 to 40 gumballs. I didn't take one when offered.

Anyway, potentially the best part of this story, and something that you probably shouldn't know if you attended the Norman reunion and lost the gumball guessing contest, is that, as my sister was told while passing out gum balls, the person in charge of the contest was counting the gumballs as she filled the jar but was interrupted and lost count so just went with the number listed on the bag***, but figured there may well have been more than 249. We'll never know. And if there were more or fewer is now a question for the courts to decide. 260 has been suggested as a more accurate number, despite the figures based on a hexagonal close-pack.

*As a side note: Maybe my Mom will give the gumballs away to our neighbors. This is something else that we can never really know.

** Correction: It was actually a wide-mouthed mason jar with handle.

*** Later evaluation concluded that 249 would be consistent with a serving size of 3 gum balls and 83 servings in the bag.