Assuming that the recipe was 1kg, we should have the 1kg baguettes form the highest point of this distribution, with an error for more or less, the baguettes would vary between a little lighter and a little heavier. This distribution of baguettes tells us that the baker uses a recipe to make baguettes weighing 950g instead of 1kg. Image taken from the book “el azar en la vida cotidiana” by Alberto Rojo (2012) Approximating the weight of the baguettes at 50g intervals, he assembled the chart below and noticed something that made him uncomfortable! (Looking at the chart below, can you find out what bothered the mathematician so much?) After a little over two months, I had gathered enough data to do an analysis. To settle his doubts about the baker’s honesty, he started weighing his baguettes as soon as he got home! In a notebook he marked the weight of the baguette and continued his day. But as a good mathematician, he was quite suspicious of things, and he had the impression that some days the baguette felt heavier and others lighter. So, every day he bought a 1 kg baguette at the bakery on his street. Poincaré like a good Frenchman, loves a baguette and can’t go through his day without. The story begins with a very common action by the French mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré…
The version of which I will tell you is the one presented in the book “el azar en la vida cotidiana”, by Alberto Rojo. “As Baguettes de Poincaré” is a famous anecdote that has gone through many names and characters.
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