Hot Dog Concession Stand

Background:

During events at your school, students operate a concession stand to raise money in support of student activities. Your team is in charge of the concession stand for this year. Your team will sell food and other items at the stand. There are 10 monthly events this year.

Each year, the team operating the stand has the goal of raising as much money as possible for student activities. In order to do this, the team needs to avoid wasting money on items that don’t sell, but also needs to have enough items to meet demand. In the past, teams have learned that at some events they purchased too many of an item, and at other events they ran out of an item.

Of most concern are perishable food items, like hot dogs. Because they are perishable, and to ensure freshness, hot dogs must be purchased only a few days before each event. Due to the school’s concession stand rules, unsold hot dogs must be either given away or thrown away (discarded in the garbage) after each event. Your teacher has collected data on the number of hot dogs sold at each event over the past several years (see Table 1). You will notice that the number of hot dogs sold at each event changes. You have also learned that at two or three of the 10 events each year, the concession stand ran out of hot dogs.