Percent Yield

Pretend for a moment that you are baking cupcakes for a friend’s birthday. The recipe directions state that you should expect twenty-four cupcakes to be produced.  This is known as the theoretical yield. However, for some reason, you actually make only sixteen cupcakes.  This is called the actual yield. You know that you followed the recipe exactly how the directions indicated; why would the theoretical yield be different from the actual yield?