Original in Spanish: GIEstimate
2018-06-26
Edit: in the end it’s called GIEstimate
Does anyone feel like making a GIE for “back of the envelope” calculations?
Let me explain for those who don’t know: these are questions where the goal is to reach an order of magnitude in the answer, always approximate; they’re also called “guesstimates”. I have no idea if it has a name in Spanish. Fermi problem, maybe? It’s about playing the know-it-all brother-in-law with problems where you don’t know even half the data you’d really need.
They can be like:
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How many people are farting at this very instant?
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How much cash in euro bills fits in a gym bag?
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How many buckets of water are there in the ocean? How long would it take you to dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench?
I don’t know, things like that. The idea is that whoever wants to poses whatever question they fancy as an open poll, so the answers can be seen together and debated in the comments.
It occurred to me reading this waitbutwhy, which I loved, where he answers “how big would the cube of gold you could buy with all the money in the world be?” or “how big a pizza could you buy with all the money in the world?”
https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/03/combined-wealth-world.html
Back of the envelope GIE? GIEstimate? Name suggestions welcome too, looks like we’ll need them XD
2018-06-27
Wooowowow, we have the first anonymous GIEstimate question!
“Which is greater, the number of serial killers ever discovered, or the number of those who have always remained hidden?“
2021-03-19
GIEstimate is the GIE for questions where the goal is to reach an order of magnitude in the answer, always approximate. They’re called “guesstimates”, “back of the envelope calculations” or “Fermi problems”. It’s about playing the know-it-all and giving a reasoned numerical estimate to problems where you don’t know even half the data you’d really need.
Define whatever isn’t defined without a trembling hand, invent what you don’t know with common sense, and don’t you dare answer “IT DEPENDS”. Here we have numerical answers for everything :)
Here’s the group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1970712826280473
(Facebook, 2018-2021)