Resonant Constellation

First read this article at the end of the link (follow it down the intertubes): The Perfect Pancake?

I found this article on my favorite humorous news aggregator, FARK.com under the headline “100 – [10L - 7F + C(k - C) + T(m - T)]/(S – E) = OM NOM NOM.” The formula (for those of you too lazy to read the article) represents a scoring system (out of 100) for making the perfect pancake. This is an admirable goal, however the mathematician who concocted this formula (and pancakes) is in egregious error. Of course this just goes to show that mathematicians should stay out of experimentation and let those of us who actually know what we’re doing handle it. Here’s the formula again:

Those of you who are not used to looking at mathematical equations (or in my case reading them more than you read actual english) may be intimidated, but rest assured that this is a very easy to understand equation. The variables (letters) mean the following:

L is the number of lumps in the batter
F is the “Flipping score”
C is the consistency of the batter
k is the “ideal” consistency of the batter
T is the temperature of the pan
m is the “ideal” temperature of the pan
S is the length of time the batter stands before cooking
E is the length of time the pancake sits before being consumed

Then we can see what each of the terms mean here. Overall, since the score is out of 100 and you’re subtracting everything from 100, you want the combination of all the variables to be as close to zero as possible. It now becomes an optimization problem: how do we make things zero? This is easiest to do by looking at each of the terms individually and this is where the formula starts to break down.

The easiest thing to see is that the denominator of the fraction should be as large as possible. The larger the number you divide by, the smaller the result. That means that should be really big. You can do this two ways, make small and/or make big.
Sounds easy enough, right?

But what does it mean physically? Well, since S is the time the batter sits, and we want to make it arbitrarily large according to the formula, we should just let our batter sit out for years and our pancakes will be delicious. Also, since E is the time we let the finished pancakes sit after done and this should be minimized, the formula suggests that we should shove our faces straight into the sizzling pan without taking it off the burner for extreme heavenly pancake delight. Beginning to see the problems here?

Next, let’s look at the numerator. You’ll notice two similar terms: and . These terms should be as small as possible to make the numerator smaller. They also both represent an optimization of consistency and temperature, however, the tricky part in this is the so-called “ideal” parameters. These are completely arbitrary values, known to many as “Fudge factors” (tangent thought: chocolate chip pancakes=good idea) and really carry no experimental weight unless you actually assign a number to them. An interesting experiment would be to isolate the other variables and simply test one or the other and see what kind of relation the awesomeness of pancakes has to these variables. Sadly, this did not happen.

The other two variables are also fudge factors. Maybe somebody likes more lumps than somebody else and the so-called flipping score is not scientific at all. Rather it is a binary value: did you flip the pancakes correctly? YES, NO. Tsk, tsk.

I also would add some terms, for example: bubbles. Do you like your pancakes to have random air pockets in them (they form as you cook)? Or do you smash your pancakes down and tap the pan to develop wonderfully homogenous, purely awesome, irresistible airless pancakes? How many times should you hit the pancake? How hard? Clearly, this calls for experimentation. If you see me on the side of the road selling hundreds of pancakes, you’ll know why.

It’s thoughts like these that keep me out of normal company.