About the Poisson Distribution of Chocolate Chips in your Cookie

For all that we complain about gimmicky, stupid, science teaching tools (oh I haven’t, well I have in my head), I need to admit that I love what University of California, Santa Cruz statistician Herbie Lee has done with a chocolate chip cookie. By plotting the random distribution of chips throughout the cookie (which requires eating it..to see all the ones in the middle), he successfully demonstrated a Poisson distribution to his students. The PD is a distribution used to model the occurrence of events over time.

I mean do you all remember your stats class? I do. First term was Thursdays from 6-9pm. Oi. At half time break I used to get a latte so strong that my hand would sometime shake when I returned to class. I mean statistics are incredibly useful, an absolute must for those in most sciences and, I admit, I still use these skills nearly daily. But MAN OH MAN was it boring to learn. I think a cookie might have helped.