Why Weight Matters
Last week, I asked you to help me with a small experiment. The task: weigh and report the weight of 1 cup of water, all-purpose flour, and chocolate chips. I intentionally didn’t provide any extra instructions because I didn’t want to skew the results in any particular direction. My goal with this experiment was to understand how cup measures translated in different kitchens (we had several international participants). I wanted people to approach weighing these ingredients like they normally would if they were making a recipe from a cookbook or elsewhere.
What The Scales Said
Most folks reported the weights in grams (which made me very happy; I’m pro-gram), and surprisingly, about 10% reported their weights in ounces and one in fluid ounces (for water). I converted all the weights to grams to play around in Excel and sorted them into ranges of weights (categories) to make it easier to visualize the numbers. What you see in each graph is the frequency or, rather, how many times a weight was reported in that range.
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