ABSTRACT
The best-known brand of British matches have printed on their boxes: ‘Average Contents 40’. What, though, is the allowed variation? If I found that a new box contained only 39 matches I would certainly not complain; though under the Trade Descriptions Act the contents of packages must be specified. Given an average contents of 40 we should expect 39, 38, or 37 quite frequently. But we should also expect boxes with 41, 42, or more matches.
