-Funding for "Doodles and Digits: How It’s Math" provided in part by... -We believe in getting outside, playing in the yard, growing things, and connecting with the Earth.

We believe good can grow anywhere.

That’s why we’re committed to grow more good everywhere.

♪♪ -Hi, I’m Caroline from "Doodles and Digits," and today we’re going to answer the question, when am I ever going to use this when it comes to math.

We get to go behind the scenes of three different industries and see how they actually use math every single day.

So join me and my math Chicken Doodles as we discover how it’s math.

-♪ Doodly doodle, doodly doodle ♪ ♪ Doodly doodles and digits ♪ ♪ Area, symmetry, fractions, too ♪ [ Bell ringing ] ♪ It’s all here for you ♪ ♪♪ -My name is Nick Trifelos.

Welcome to the Anthony-Thomas Candy Company.

I am fifth generation of our family owned company, and I am the national sales and marketing manager.

We use math every single day here at Anthony-Thomas.

I personally keep my phone with me at all times.

I use the calculator throughout the day.

My grandfather actually keeps an old-fashioned calculator about this big in his pocket, and we use it to be able to finalize how many numbers we need of each.

For instance, when we’re making candy bars, we will need to know how many wrappers we’re using for that day and make sure we have enough in our inventory.

So what we will do is we will take from our existing inventory, minus the number that we need, and see what is left so we can keep for leftover production and for the future, as well.

We have a special team that formulates our recipes and makes sure we have everything written down to a fine point.

What they do is make sure that we have enough sugar, milk, chocolate, whatever it is for each product, and we’ll be able to weigh it out.

So, for instance, we will know that our English toffee is 50%, or one half of it, is butter.

So we can find out how many pieces of candy we made that day.

What we do takes a little bit of math.

We are able to set our machines to run a certain amount of molds a minute.

What a mold is, is the actual tray that takes the candy from start to finish.

So we know there’ll be 12 molds a minute.

Each mold holds 42 pieces.

So what we can do is we can take the 12 molds a minute times 42 pieces, and then we’re running an 8-hour shift.

So we know to times that by 60 to get it in hours.

So 12 times the 42 gets you the total amount in a minute.

Times 60 gets you how much you need in an hour.

And then we’re open eight hours a day for just one shift.

So that would be then times 8.

So that would give us how many pieces we made that day.

For instance, with buckeyes, we make 147,000 buckeyes in eight hours.

We have a lot of equipment that can weigh out each of our candy bars.

We have three different size options that we offer here at Anthony-Thomas, a 1 ounce, a 1.5 ounce and a 3.5 ounce.

We need to double check, though, and weigh the candies, as well, and make sure that they are the appropriate weights.

So there will be a certain amount of grams we are looking for, and we will use a scale to see how heavy the bars are, to check and make sure the machines are running them at the right weight.

Four times a year here at Anthony-Thomas, we have to add up all of our inventory.

What that means is we need to know how much money we have invested here in our company in wrappers, chocolate, packaging.

Every material we have has to be added up.

So we will go around and see how many gold 16-ounce boxes we have.

And if we have 30 16-ounce gold boxes, we will mark that down, put it in our system, and we’ll have to line everything up each item and then times it by what the cost was to us.

-Quick questions at a chocolate factory.

What does a typical day look like at a chocolate factory?

-A typical day at Anthony-Thomas starts right at 6:00 in the morning in our kitchen.

So we’re open from 6:00 until 1:00 at night, so we’re open very late.

A typical morning will start with making the candies.

We go up there and check each piece as they come out in the beginning to make sure that the candies are coming out exactly the way we like them.

And a very important step is weighing the candy, making sure that it is the exact weight for what we need for each box, because if it is too light or too heavy, the box will not be where it was supposed to.

Another major step of our mornings is being able to make sure that everyone was here on time and that we have everything we need for that production day.

Again, that’s going through our inventory and seeing how much we have of each item.

And sometimes you have inventory in multiple spots of the factory, so you will have to add up all the inventory in different parts.

We may have some wrappers in our kitchen, we may have some downstairs in our warehouse, and we may have some in the office.

So you’ll need to add those three numbers up to find out, oh, we have 100 wrappers in total.

-How do you determine the price of your chocolate?

-There’s a lot of factors that go into determining the price of a box of candy.

Right now, a standard box of candy at Anthony-Thomas is around 22.95 for a pound.

You need to take into account a lot of factors when coming into price.

Not only do you need to know the price of the each individual ingredients, but you need to know what percent you’re using those.

Again, for the English toffee, we know that it’s 50% butter.

So when we’re coming up with the English toffee price, we need to use a fraction of what we paid for the butter and know how much is going into the toffee.

You also have to add in the cost of labor, the cost of storage, the cost of packaging, transportation to our stores, and the employee wages at our stores.

So there’s a lot of different factors that go into pricing a box of candy.

I bet you never knew that.

-How important is it to be precise?

-It is so important to be precise when you’re creating chocolates because you want every piece to taste the exact same.

You don’t want to have a lot of variety in how the candies are tasting, or else people won’t want to buy them.

If they know they love your piece, they want a milk chocolate buttercream, they want it to be the same every time.

That’s why it is so important to measure out and be precise with all of your ingredients so that you get full flavor in every bite and that it always tastes the same.

And we use fractions and we use lots of math in our recipes to be able to create each piece.

-Is it important to show your thinking?

-It is very important for us to keep track of how much we’ve made a day or how much we have left.

So what we’ll do is we will write down on a piece of paper how many batches we’ve made.

For instance, if we’re going to make 20 batches of buttercreams, we will make sure to not make a notch for each one so then we can minus and not make too much, because we do not want to waste any product here and be wasteful.

So what we will do is, if we have 20, and by lunch, there’s 9 notches, we'll minus 9 and know we have to make 11 more batches before the end of the day.

-What tools do you use when doing math?

-For math, my favorite is simple pen and pencil, but I do use my phone every day to calculate how many pieces we’ve made or how much more we have to go.

But the best way for me is just simple writing down 10 times 5 or 16 times 7 and just doing it by hand, carrying the one and making sure I have everything I need written down.

Upstairs in our factory, we use the metric system.

So we’re using grams and we will weigh all of the boxes of candy, depending on if it’s a stock box, which is larger, about 6 pounds, or an individual 1-pound box, which you’ll see in our stores, Even down to the bite-size piece, we'll weigh it to make sure that each piece is where they need to be.

So we probably have about 50 scales in our facility.

-Did you enjoy math growing up?

-I did enjoy math growing up.

Believe it or not, I took calculus in high school and I took math all throughout my four years of university.

-What is your best piece of advice for math students?

-My advice to you for math is that always try your hardest and always take your classes seriously.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help, and the best way to learn is to sometimes work with a buddy or a friend and do things together.

Get together after school, work on it, or see where you can use math in your everyday life, from just tidying up your room and seeing how many toys you have, or from even realizing how many pieces of gum you have left.

Math can be used every day.

Chocolate is the best industry in the world.

It truly is a sweet job.

We have tours here at our facility in central Columbus and are more than happy to welcome you where then you can see the math in our daily work here in person.

So please visit us, and we look forward to meeting you.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Clock ticking ] ♪♪ -Did you get it right?

♪♪ ♪♪ -Hi, my name is Megan Ada and I own three restaurants.

The one I’m in currently is called Asterisk Supper Club and we’re located in Uptown Westerville.

And then, I also have two other restaurants.

One is called Sunny Street Café.

It’s a breakfast restaurant.

And then, the other one is called Ampersand, which is the "and" sign.

We serve ramen and Asian-style rice bowls.

So here at Asterisk, we serve afternoon tea.

You should come check it out.

We do have, like, fun teacups.

And we have clotted cream and jam and tea sandwiches.

So we open at noon and we start with our afternoon tea and then we start dinner service.

So, then, the chefs and the cooks are getting everything ready, changing the line over to serve dinner.

Christie, she’s our pastry chef.

She’s 73 years old and she’s still working really hard.

She’s been with us since we opened.

So she makes all the scones and the fun desserts.

We close around 9:00 or 10:00, just depending on which day it is.

Usually takes us about an hour and a half, two hours to close.

So I would say, you know, we roughly do about 12- to 14-hour days.

It’s a lot of work.

We work, yes, a lot.

But, yeah, I do a lot of e-mails, I pay a lot of bills, I do a lot of the behind the scenes that keeps us in business.

So math, obviously, is extremely important.

Got to be able to pay your bills.

You got to be able to budget so that you’re actually making money.

One of the biggest things is, with math and what I do every day, is making sure what we sell is a certain price because we have to buy the product, and then we have to sell it for a certain amount to make sure we make money off of that.

So when you have a plate in front of you and, say, that plate costs me $5.

So you’re putting your proteins, your starches, your vegetables, it’s all in this plate.

So you have to add up all those ingredients to figure out exactly how much that costs you.

So, say this plate costs me $5.

So, in the restaurant industry, you want your food costs to be anywhere from 25% to 32%, just depending on, you know, your style restaurant.

So, here at Asterisk, we like to shoot for around 28%.

So, say, for instance, this dish cost me $5.

You divide that by 28%.

So, 28%, you would move your decimal over so it would be divided by 0.28.

So I wrote this down for this video.

So if you do $5 divided by 0.28, which is your 28% food cost, the number is $17.85.

So, normally, then we would just round it up to $18.

So that’s how we know now, when you come in to eat at the restaurant, you’re going to pay $18 for this entrée.

Labor is also really important.

You want to make sure your labor, same thing, like, with the food cost is a certain percentage.

So, Asterisk, we had a really good last two weeks.

We did a total of $50,000 -- 25,000 and 25,000.

And, so, we do -- You want it to be right around that 30%.

I believe, in some of the restaurants, like, say, fast food, probably be a little bit less than that.

But, you know, here I want to make sure the staff gets paid, you know, a good salary and a good living.

-Quick questions with the restaurant owner.

How do you know how much food to order?

-Ordering is very important.

It’s one of the most important jobs that you could have because you’re spending a lot of money.

We call it the Goldilocks, where it’s you want to have just enough, but you want to have enough where you are just about to run out.

So it’s, over time, practice.

You get to know, like, time of the year, you’re busier at this time and so forth.

Holidays.

So they say, after your five year in business is when you have the best guess of how your business is going to do in sales.

It’s constantly a guessing game, but you can, to a certain extent, like, have an idea of what to expect.

But the first few years are very difficult to gauge.

-How important is it to show your thinking?

-You have to know where and how you’re getting that number.

A, also just because, if you want to teach other people for training purposes, you want to have that step by step, "This is how I got to this," or else you could forget how you got it.

Yeah, when we have lots of graphs and charts that, you know, we work with just to keep our food costs where we want it to be.

But, yeah, definitely want to show how you got that number.

Right.

-How do you use measurement?

-Definitely, you know, as the chefs and as the pastry chefs, cooking can be a very, like, exact science.

So if you’re baking, you want to make sure everything is exact.

So you have your measuring cups and you have your tablespoons, your teaspoons, all of those things.

Like, you have to be exact every time and measure because, if you don’t, it’s not going to turn out.

And again, in the restaurant world, you go to your favorite restaurant because you get the same thing every time.

So that’s why it’s really important.

We measure, we have our recipes sitting next to us every time we make something, and line by line, we make sure it’s very consistent.

We measure everything out.

So measuring is very important when it comes to cooking.

-How important is it to be precise?

-Extremely important to be very thorough.

Just in any job, but especially as a business owner.

You know, it was a lot, a lot, a lot of money in order to make and build a restaurant.

So it’s a lot of money that doesn’t belong to me.

It belongs to the bank.

So if I don’t pay my bills, then I potentially lose the business.

And then, now the bank is allowed to have my home.

[ Laughs ] So it’s really important that, when you’re coming up with those formulas and also, like, making sure we don’t waste food, that we actually are making a profit in order to pay the bank back.

-Why do you love math?

-Math was absolutely hands down my favorite subject.

I got excited about tests.

I definitely just love numbers.

It's just how my brain works.

One thing, though, that I for some reason can’t do, I can’t do math in my head.

I have always had to write it out, but that doesn’t mean I’m not good at math.

I just need more visual.

But, yeah, I enjoyed math a lot.

-What is your best piece of advice for math students?

-I would say learn as much as you can, because the more you learn now, the more successful you’ll be later on in life, and you’ll be thankful that you worked really hard, you did all your homework.

I loved having lemonade stands, so it’s probably like a sign of that I wanted to be in this kind of business.

So I knew I wanted to be in the restaurant industry for a very long time.

And I started when I was 16 and I owned -- I’ve been owning restaurants for 11 years now.

I started when I was 25.

So it doesn’t matter.

Age is only a number.

You just got to work really, really hard and don’t give up.

And you can become a restaurant owner, too, or whatever kind of business that you want to own.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Clock ticking ] ♪♪ -20,000 plus 20,000 plus 20,000 equals $60,000 in net sales.

♪♪ When you think of a library, you think of reading and books.

But did you know there’s actually a ton of math involved when you go to the library?

Let’s check it out.

♪♪ -Hi, I’m Jess Patton.

I work at Old Worthington Library.

I’m the circulation manager, and that means that I work with all the folks who help you get your cards when you come in and check out your books for you and check them in when you put them in the return wall out there.

And one of the ways we use math at the library is for schedules.

So, if you work 20 hours a week, everyone has their set time, and then that means, if you work five days, you have to work four hours for each of those days so that you have 20 hours at the end.

Another way we use math is paying for materials.

So if you take out a library book and you lose it or your dog eats it and you have to pay for it, you know, we look at the price and then, of course, you'd give us the money and we would give you your change back.

We also use math when we’re ordering books.

So, if we’re going to get a new book in and a lot of people want it, we have something called a reserve ratio.

So for every four people who join that list to ask for it, we put another one in the order.

And that’s how we figure out what to get.

And then, we also use math visually when we’re doing the shelves.

And we have 3/4 of the shelf is full of books, and 1/4 should be open.

So we can go and put the other ones in as we need to.

-Quick questions with a circulation manager.

How does the library use decimals?

-So, the way we mostly use decimals in the library is that all of our books are separated into fiction or nonfiction.

Fiction means that something is made up.

So like a story that somebody wrote, and nonfiction is a true thing, or it’s got facts, and it’s going to teach you something.

So all of our nonfiction materials use something called the Dewey Decimal System, and that’s how we know where to put them in the library.

For instance, this one is "The Popcorn Book," and it’s got a Dewey decimal number of 641.6567.

And, so, the Dewey Decimal System explains where to put all those things.

And a lot of libraries use it.

So, to break that down, anything in 600s is applied technology.

That might cover things like buildings, construction, medicine, or making products.

But in 640, specifically, is home and family management.

And then, you get to 641.

That’s food and drink.

641.6 is anything cooking specific materials.

641.65 is for cooking vegetables.

And then, 641.6567 is specifically for cooking popcorn.

So that’s how you would know where to put that book in the library or where to find it if you were looking for it.

-How important is it to be precise?

-Because when people come in and they need to find a book, it needs to go exactly where -- they need to know exactly where to look for it.

And you might come in and just say, "Hey, I’d like to see all your books on popcorn."

And a librarian would help you go exactly to all the books with this number, and you could look through them and pick the one you wanted.

So it’s important that they’re all together there so you can decide what you want.

-How does the library use time?

-We have a little under 30 people in our department that I work in.

And, so, when we’re doing schedules for them, some people come in in the morning, some people come later and work at night.

And, so, if you come in in the morning, everyone who did that works about four hours.

And then, we have to make sure they get an hour for lunch and then they work the rest of their shift.

Everyone on the other end comes in, and then they get a few hours for dinner and then probably work another four hours so that we’ve covered the library from when we open until when we close.

-Did you enjoy math growing up?

-My favorite thing about math growing up is feeling like there always is an answer for something.

And, so, there’s one way to get to it or another, but there’s going to be an end, and you can figure it out if you work at it.

-What is your best piece of advice for math students?

-Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Clock ticking ] ♪♪ -Did you get it correct?

-Funding for "Doodles and Digits: How It’s Math" provided in part by... -We believe in getting outside, playing in the yard, growing things, and connecting with the Earth.

We believe good can grow anywhere.

That’s why we’re committed to grow more good everywhere.