[diego898]

Purely empirical observation, in my own life, make no claim as to humanity/society/etc.:

It's interesting how often fermi estimation problems are used as proxy's for "intelligence". Something like: 'let's assess how well "they can think" - how many golf balls fit in a baseball stadium?' etc.

Often, doing well in these kinds of problems can more than makeup for a lack of specific knowledge in something someone is interested in assessing!

[miobrien]

This reminds me of a question from my first interview as a college grad: estimate the number of taxis in New York City. I was totally baffled by it.

[singleshot_]

I’ll simplify for manhattan and extrapolate for the four outer boroughs. Ten avenues, a hundred streets. A thousand blocks? One cab per block? One thousand cabs in manhattan? 5,000 total?

There are about 13,500 taxi medallions.

[Breza]

I had a great boss who really liked that kind of question. I disagreed with him. I would rather have someone who knows how to find the official answer online and verify the quality of the source.