So the other day, I was at Meijer doing some grocery shopping.
I noticed some Easter themed tables where they held Easter related contests. One of them was to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar. The prize: the beans themselves. Now I am usually a good sport about things. But I am also very competitive, and when jelly beans are at stake, I bring out the math. I counted the number in the circumference and the height, and plugged it into the following equation:

The result was 732, which I hastily marked on my entry form.

About 20 minutes after I leave the store, I got a call: "Are you Terence Lee?"

"Yes."

"You just won the Meijer jelly bean contest! There were 720 jelly beans in the jar."

They asked me my age. I panicked. I thought the contest was just for cheery 7-year old kids. I told them the truth: I was 19.  Awkward pause. "Okay, I guess we don't need to get parental permission then." Whew.

I went back to the store and picked up the jar. It looked like the staff was expecting a little boy or girl to show up. Nope. Those little kids probably made dumb guesses like 100.  100 is probably the biggest number they can think of. I crushed the dreams of little children and gained some tasty morsels (my two favorite hobbies) all with one application of math. My self esteem is pretty high right now.

The moral of the story:  Teach your kids geometry in 1st grade, or a mean college kid will steal their candy.