Larger cans give the beer more time to get warm, so you throw away more and thus buy more. There’s other valid reasons, like less aluminium cost, but I’m going with the devious choice.
Which does nothing to explain the 18 packs of 8 oz cans of Bud I saw at Publix the other day. Have to admit, I immediately had to know how they compared to 12 packs. I suppose multiplying units by unit volumes would have been the obvious solution, but the way I see things an 8 oz can is 2/3 of a 12 oz can, so there would have to be 3/2 as many. Besides, I couldn’t multiply by 18 to save my life (multiply by twenty and knock off 10% I can do however). Math might be hard, but it’s easier when you cheat.
16 oz. is a pint. Two words: frozen mug. When I was a drinker, I used to keep a half dozen pint mugs in the freezer for parties. When Bud came out with 16 oz. aluminum bottles, I used to pour them into a mug. Problem solved. Being an alcoholic, I didn’t care about temperature.
That being said, I don’t think you should consider it “cheating” to use tricks for multiplication. I do it all the time. For large multiplication problems, I just break down the numbers. For instance, when working on carpentry using large boards, I have to sometimes do the math in my head. An 8 ft. board is 96 inches long. If I have to cover a certain linear distance, I can break that down by 8 and 12 and do the math accordingly. Or even 3 x 32. I think that’s the whole point to teaching kids math at a young age. If they can learn the “tricks” but still express the problems logically on paper, they’re going to excel.
I remember trying to teach my 9 year old cousin how to do long division. I think I used Pi as an example. He got frustrated after the first numeral after the decimal (3.1, in this case). He’d not learned much past whole numbers, a shock to me at 9, and so Pi would’ve been a handful to him. FWIW, I divided out Pi to 61 digits on paper when I was in 2nd grade. My math teacher gave me a pat on the head, and I learned what it meant to be a nerd after I got punched in the back by the class bully later that day.
PS... that bully now works as a stock boy at Best Buy. He’s also 32. I laugh.