(Ebook) Guesstimation 2.0: Solving Today's Problems On The Back of A Napkin by Lawrence Weinstein Patricia Edwards ISBN 9781400844661 Full Digital Chapters
(Ebook) Guesstimation 2.0: Solving Today's Problems On The Back of A Napkin by Lawrence Weinstein Patricia Edwards ISBN 9781400844661 Full Digital Chapters
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Lawrence Weinstein
¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿
Solving Today’s Problems
on the Back of a Napkin
This book has been composed in Minion Pro with Scala Sans display
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
press.princeton.edu
Typeset by S R Nova Pvt Ltd, Bangalore, India
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my parents, who taught me to love learning
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Preface xiii
2 General Questions 11
2.1 Who unrolled the toilet paper? 13
2.2 Money height 17
2.3 Blotting out the Sun 19
2.4 Really extra-large popcorn 21
2.5 Building volume 25
2.6 Mass of money 29
2.7 A baseball in a glass of beer 33
2.8 Life on the phone 37
2.9 Money under the bridge 41
2.10 Monkeys and Shakespeare 45
2.11 The titans of siren 49
2.12 Airheads at the movies 53
2.13 Heavy cars and heavier people 55
2.14 Peeing in the pool 59
vii
4 The Five Senses 101
4.1 Don’t stare at the Sun 103
4.2 Men of vision 105
4.3 Light a single candle 109
4.4 Oh say can you see? 113
4.5 Bigger eyes 117
4.6 They’re watching us! 121
4.7 Beam the energy down, Scotty! 125
4.8 Oh say can you hear? 131
4.9 Heavy loads 135
viii Contents
7 Heavenly Bodies 223
7.1 Orbiting the Sun 227
7.2 Flying off the Earth 229
7.3 The rings of Earth 233
7.4 It is not in the stars to hold our destiny 237
7.5 Orbiting a neutron star 241
7.6 How high can we jump? 245
7.7 Collapsing Sun 249
7.8 Splitting the Moon 253
7.9 Splitting a smaller moon 257
7.10 Spinning faster and slower 263
7.11 Shrinking Sun 267
7.12 Spinning Earth 271
7.13 The dinosaur killer and the day 273
7.14 The Yellowstone volcano and the day 277
7.15 The orbiting Moon 281
7.16 The shortest day 283
8 Materials 289
8.1 Stronger than spider silk 291
8.2 Beanstalk to orbit 295
8.3 Bolt failure 299
8.4 Making mountains out of molecules 303
8.5 Chopping down a tree 307
9 Radiation 311
9.1 Nuclear neutrinos 315
9.2 Neutrinos and you 319
9.3 Solar neutrinos 323
9.4 Supernovas can be dangerous 327
9.5 Reviving ancient bacteria 331
9.6 Decaying protons 335
9.7 Journey to the center of the galaxy 337
ix
Appendix A
Dealing with Large Numbers 341
A.1 Large Numbers 341
A.2 Precision, Lots of Digits, and Lying 343
A.3 Numbers and Units 345
Appendix B
Pegs to Hang Things On 347
Bibliography 351
Index 355
x Contents
Acknowledgments
xi
to be extra careful to be absolutely correct because she
was writing a book, she laughed and responded that
she had far more freedom to write what she wanted in
a book than in a magazine article.
Any errors or omissions in this book are, of course,
all mine.
xii Acknowledgments
Preface
xiii
In addition to learning how to estimate for fun
and profit, we’ll become a lot more familiar with big
numbers. These numbers are all around us, and some
of them are even important. There are a billion people
in China. The federal budget deficit is a trillion dollars.
The president was paid a million dollars. After a while
all these zillions sound the same. However, a trillion
is a thousand times bigger than a billion, which is a
thousand times bigger than a million. A factor of a
thousand is a lot. If you make $50,000 a year, then
you probably don’t worry too much about spending
$50 for something important. Similarly, if the federal
budget deficit is $1 trillion, then we probably shouldn’t
worry too much about spending $1 billion for some-
thing important (assuming that we can agree on what
is important).
Randall Munroe of xkcd.com, describes in a web
comic the difference between a million and a billion
more graphically.
xiv Preface
average plunged one thousand points in just a few
minutes. According to the New York Times, “Federal
officials fielded rumors that the culprit was a single
stock, a single institution or execution system, a $16
billion trade that should have been $16 million” [1].
Oops.
By the way, Google really does use questions like
the following in job interviews. How many golf balls
can fit in a school bus? How many piano tuners are
there in the whole world? [2, 3]. If you can answer
questions like these, you will be more attractive to
companies like Google because it shows that you are
a flexible thinker, are willing to attack imprecise ques-
tions, and can apply your knowledge to real-world
questions.
And you will finally know the answer, if not to the
question of “life, the universe, and everything” [4],
then at least to the question of “paper or plastic?”
xv
How to Solve Problems
Chapter 1
¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿
Why estimate?
Because we need to know an answer so we can decide
what to do. If we’re deciding whether to drive to
Virginia Beach for the weekend, we need to estimate
how long it will take. If we’re deciding whether to get
a solar panel on our new car, we need to estimate how
much gas it will save. If we’re deciding between paper
and plastic, we need to estimate how much plastic is
in the bags we use each year. All these questions (and
many more) lead to actions. If the drive is too long, we
won’t go to Virginia Beach. If the solar panel generates
enough energy, we’ll buy that option. If we only use a
few pounds of plastic bags in a year, we won’t agonize
over the choice.
We are not looking to determine the answers to
these questions precisely. We just need to deter-
mine them well enough to decide on an action. This
means answers fall into one of the three “Goldilocks”
categories:
1. too big
2. too small
3. just right
If the answer is too big or too small, then the action is
obvious. If the driving time is about 1 hour (too small)
then we will drive to Virginia Beach for the weekend.
If the driving time is about 10 hours (too big) then
we won’t. Only if the driving time is in between (just
right), do we need more information (such as how
much traffic to expect). Similarly, if the solar panel
option on the new car will save about 500 gallons of
gasoline each year (too big), then we will buy the solar
panel. If the solar panel option will only save about
5 gallons of gasoline each year (too small), then we
will not buy it. If it will save an intermediate amount,
then we need to do more work to get a more precise
Dare to be imprecise!
None of those answers is precisely correct. Precise an-
swers take a lot more time. However, most questions
3
do not need persnickety precision. If you want to buy
a car and can only afford to spend $5,000, then you
cannot buy a new car. If you can afford to spend
$100,000, then you can buy a new car. Only if you
have an intermediate amount, for example $15,000,
do you need to know the cost of a new car more
precisely.
Of course, if all problems were this easy, you would
not bother with this book. If the problem is more
complicated than that, we need to simplity it.
Estimate by bounding
Technique: It is often easier and more reliable to
estimate upper and lower limits for something than
to estimate the quantity directly. Consider estimating
the amount of time each day that the average col-
lege student spends talking or texting on his or her
cell phone. We don’t know if it is 10, 27, 34 or 62
minutes. However, we can confidently claim that it is
from and 89
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