The Award for Investigative Pizza Journalism

goes to John Crudele of the New York Post, who arrives at the surprising conclusion:

Here are the piping-hot details. Those pizzas you take home are 16 inches in diameter. The ones that are sold by the slice are 20 inches. Let’s say a full pizza costs $15, which we think is the typical price these days. And a slice of pizza goes for $2.50, also standard around Manhattan and in the ’burbs.

There are typically eight pieces to a pie. So a pie that is sold by the slice is worth $20 — or eight pieces times $2.50 if you want to see the math.

The 16-inch pie is just under 201 square inches in size. The 20-inch pie is 314 square inches. So one slice of the eight-piece, 16-inch pie is 25.12 square inches. And a piece of the 20-inch pie is 39.25 square inches.

With those numbers, you are paying 7 cents per square inch for the smaller pie and only 6 cents per square inch for the larger one. (Those are rounded just like the pies.)

So, to my surprise and maybe yours, it’s typically a better bargain to go into the pizzeria and order eight single slices of pizza rather than a full pie. To be precise (or as precise as you can get with these “typical” numbers), you’d be getting 56 percent more pizza for only 33 percent more cost.

Hat tip: RealClearInvestigations