One morning a few weeks ago I decided to grab a donut on my way to work instead of eating at home in the morning. I bought a donut and a box of 25 Munchkins (donut holes) at the Dunkin Donuts [1] in Auburndale, Massachusetts.
The donut I ate. The box of holes I left in the kitchen before 7:00 AM. By 11:30 three remained. By lunchtime, all were gone.
Wow, that was fast.
I wonder what would happen if I brought in twice as many?
The box of 50 was gone by lunch, but there were more remaining at 11:30 than the first time.
Wow, that's quite an appetite we have. I wonder what would happen if I brought in even more?
The following Monday I brought in 75 donut holes.
By 11:30 about 10 remained, and after lunch only four of the undesirable "plain" variety remained.
The result is, each increment of 25 donuts leaves 3.3 uneaten by 11:30 (round results to integers[2]). In other words, those of us who work mornings are 87% efficient at turning donuts into code. I believe I also proved that satiation is impossible because appetite scales with supply.
Note that we have three college students here working as summer interns. A fourth employee has requested that he be considered a college student for purposes of appetite.
[1] Our founder was recently reminding us to look beyond stereotypes. Those of you inclined to take that advice should know that I once saw a city police officer running a speed trap out of the parking lot of that Dunkin Donuts to meet his ticket quota.
[2] Donut holes are quantized. Half holes are rare.
With ordinary donuts fractions are not merely possible, they are regularly observed as people have an aversion to taking the last piece. So the sequence of donuts remaining may go 3, 2, 1, ½, ¼, ⅛, 0. The sequence terminates because the reward of a sixteenth of a donut is so small and the silliness so large that polite people refuse to split it and one of the rest of us finishes the job in a single bite.