When it comes to spending money, everyone is always looking for the “best bang for your buck.” Sure, we’ll splurge on things we truly want, but with food–we want the lowest cost possible. Shoes, on the other hand, we’ll pay full price.



Think about all of the times you go out to eat–don’t you always try to get the combo to save money? No? Just me? Okay. I’m just the type of person who works hard for her money and wants sales, sales, sales. But, sometimes, it takes me a really long time figure out which option is the best option to save money. Recently, I came across a tweet online that left me with my jaw on the floor.

Sean posted this wing menu from a Chinese restaurant–Danny’s Wok–that breaks down their wing prices by how much you order. While the prices vary based on how many wings are in the order, I can’t seem to figure out how they come up with their price/wing correlation.

theres gotta be a better way to convey this information pic.twitter.com/pHEswDU0TC — sean (@seanposting) October 21, 2018

And, because Twitter is Twitter and everyone has a say–people chimed in to share their thoughts on just how this came to be. There were charts, there were graphs, there were mathematical equations I still cannot fully understand because I am a writer and not a numbers person.

Here's a spreadsheet where I extrapolated the prices of 1-3 wings, then tracked the difference by subtracting the price of the last multiple of 25 (in column C). You can see the deviation when it hits 75 compared to 50, then continue tracking the deviations as I laid them out. pic.twitter.com/Se7RrypOym — DragonFucker9000 (@CyclopsDragon) October 23, 2018

So they calculated the cost as

C = n*1.1125 + x

rounded to the nearest 5 cents, where C’s the total cost, n is the number of wings, and x is their operating expenses to the nearest 5 cents, starting at 10c and going up to 15c, 20c etc. — Alex HalldenAbberton (@AlexHlldnAbbrtn) October 23, 2018

this formula breaks down at the 24 wing mark, and I can't figure out what on earth went wrong at that point pic.twitter.com/lCmDu7j13b — Lynn (@chordbug) October 21, 2018

I'm not seeing the pattern but there's an awesome minimization problem in here somewhere to get the best price for N wings. pic.twitter.com/l4F61VAJin — Todd Gamblin (@tgamblin) October 22, 2018

Did some lpSolve in R....you can only save a max of 5 cents.... Full table here: https://t.co/E9U3DZjaV7 pic.twitter.com/O9CaTLkugC — Sam Sharpe (@SharpeWordz) October 25, 2018

If you want less than 25 wings, the best option is to get a multiple of three. For 25 or more, 25, 50 and 125 have the same, lowest, price per wing. pic.twitter.com/u6VCF1D6IW — ranrøjB nitfuT (@btuftin) October 22, 2018

4 Chicken wings (4.55+n)

where n is an additional chicken wing and n=$1.15 two out of every third time where n=$1.10 — Six (@SoulreaverSix) October 21, 2018

Anyway, the pattern is:



x = 3.40*(n div 3) + 1.15(n mod 3)



("div" is "divide by and round down" and "mod" is "remainder after division") — Juju (@jujuadams) October 21, 2018

I am too into chicken wings and don't value my time, so if anyone is interested, this is a graph of the pricing per wing pic.twitter.com/GTmZPQFstt — sarAHHHH ? (@ineedsarahpy) October 25, 2018

Late to the party, so not sure if someone did this already. Black line is the advertised cost. Red dotted line is the per unit cost at the lower end of the scale (4.55$ divided by 4). The gap between the two lines are the savings you get by buying lots of wings. pic.twitter.com/ShsWofKzkM — Vincent Arel-Bundock (@VincentAB) October 26, 2018

But, the real hero is this person, who broke down the cheapest way to order the amount of wings you truly want.

For anyone that wants the best bang for your buck, here's the cheapest way to buy any amount of wings. pic.twitter.com/vkaC6n1YrB — Rama Gosula (@MrGosula) October 25, 2018

Sometimes, I am truly thankful for Twitter. Today is that day.