Guesstimation

Guesstimation is a delightful book that, page after page, gleams with insight into the measure of all things--from house pets to lottery tickets and from the kitchen to the cosmos. Meanwhile, the authors cleverly teach you some fundamental chemistry, physics, and biology, leaving you enlightened and curiously comfortable with all that once seemed intractable in the world. -- Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, author of "Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries" Wow, I suddenly grasped concepts that have eluded me for a lifetime. If you work anywhere in the professional world and are aiming for the corner office, this little book could have significant impact on both your analytical abilities and the way you are perceived by others. An absolute eye-opener! -- Martin Yate, New York Times best-selling author of the "Knock 'Em Dead" job-search and career-management books In a world where we are constantly bombarded with quantitative information (and disinformation) and where implausible factoids become established truths by repetition, acquiring a sound grounding in 'numeric literacy' has almost become a civic duty. Weinstein and Adam show to us that it can also be fun! An extremely useful book--not just for the intelligent layperson, but for virtually everyone: politicians, students, policymakers and, yes, sometimes even physicists. -- Riccardo Rebonato, Royal Bank of Scotland, author of "Plight of the Fortune Tellers" As well as giving insight into how scientists think, this book packs in more amazing facts than you could shake a stick at. Learn the technique of 'guesstimation' and you will be able to astound your friends at parties, as well as avoid getting ripped off by misleading advertising claims. You may even be able to work out how many facts you can shake a stick at. -- John Gribbin, author of "Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity" A very interesting and informative work, showing both how important and how easy it can be to estimate magnitudes. This book will amuse you while it instructs. -- Gino Segre, author of "A Matter of Degrees" This is definitely my kind of book. The authors show, using numerous examples, how readers can make numerical estimates of quantities--some absurd and some fascinating--in a wide variety of areas. This is a very useful talent--be it in everyday life, in one's career, or in job interviews. -- Robert Ehrlich, author of "Eight Preposterous Propositions" This book will benefit teachers and students in science and engineering, from grade school to college. The problems are well chosen to illustrate increasingly complex themes, culminating in energy conservation, risk assessment, and environmental problems. The solutions are careful, complete, and illuminating. General readers with a taste for mathematical puzzles will enjoy it. -- Hans Christian von Baeyer, author of "The Fermi Solution"

Enables anyone with basic math and science skills to estimate virtually anything - quickly - using plausible assumptions and elementary arithmetic. This book presents an array of estimation problems that range from devilishly simple to quite sophisticated and from real-world concerns to silly ones.Guesstimation is a book that unlocks the power of approximation--it's popular mathematics rounded to the nearest power of ten! The ability to estimate is an important skill in daily life. More and more leading businesses today use estimation questions in interviews to test applicants' abilities to think on their feet. Guesstimation enables anyone with basic math and science skills to estimate virtually anything--quickly--using plausible assumptions and elementary arithmetic. Lawrence Weinstein and John Adam present an eclectic array of estimation problems that range from devilishly simple to quite sophisticated and from serious real-world concerns to downright silly ones. How long would it take a running faucet to fill the inverted dome of the Capitol? What is the total length of all the pickles consumed in the US in one year? What are the relative merits of internal-combustion and electric cars, of coal and nuclear energy? The problems are marvelously diverse, yet the skills to solve them are the same. The authors show how easy it is to derive useful ballpark estimates by breaking complex problems into simpler, more manageable ones--and how there can be many paths to the right answer. The book is written in a question-and-answer format with lots of hints along the way. It includes a handy appendix summarizing the few formulas and basic science concepts needed, and its small size and French-fold design make it conveniently portable. Illustrated with humorous pen-and-ink sketches, Guesstimation will delight popular-math enthusiasts and is ideal for the classroom.