Guesstimation Solving the Worlds Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin (Paperback)

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Review
Dr. Adam and his colleague Lawrence Weinstein, a professor of physics, offer a wide and often amusing assortment of Fermi flexes in a book that just caught my eye, Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin.
(Natalie Angier New York Times )

An important skill of great use . . . is the ability to derive an approximate result from insufficient data. Guesstimation is a collection of [problems] gathered from everyday life and various fields. Working out questions . . . is both entertaining and enlightening. It may also help foster your career . . . because making correct guesses quickly establishes your reputation as an expert.
(Stephan Mertens Science )

This book is a stimulating collection that will help the reader to reach informed judgments and will be a useful source of inspiration for mathematics and physics teachers: my only concern is that if my students have read it before they arrive at university, I may have to find a new approach to my first day's teaching.
(Tony Mann Times Higher Education )

While few can hope to emulate the brilliance of a Nobel Prize winner like [Enrico] Fermi, coming up with pretty good guesstimates is a skill that can be taught. And that's the aim of Guesstimation. After a quick tutorial, the authors get down to business with a host of wide-ranging worked examples, from estimating the numbers of piano tuners in Los Angeles to figuring out the impact of deforestation on greenhouse gas levels. The results are sometimes surprising.
(Robert Matthews BBC Focus Magazine )

[Guesstimation is] a left-brain book that helps you approximate answers to the types of questions actually asked in some job interviews today.
(Peter Coy BusinessWeek )

[A] delightful account of mathematical approximation, which instills the beauty and power of the back-of-the-envelope calculation. The puzzles make addictive confidence builders by breaking down tricky questions into manageable parts. Never again will you take a newspaper figure at face value without feeling the need, and confidence, to guesstimate your own figure.
(Matthew Killeya New Scientist )

Guesstimation is both enlightening and entertaining. I recommend it to my fellow journalists both as a tool of our trade and as a mind stretcher.
(Rony V. Diaz Manila Times )

Any idea what fraction of land in the US is covered by either a roof or pavement? Known as a Fermi problem, this type of question requires the use of reasonable estimation, which is the focus of the book at hand. In the initial chapters, Weinstein and Adam briefly review good 'guesstimation' techniques involving numbers and explain why the use of the geometric mean is preferred over the arithmetic mean.
(J. Johnson Choice )

How many people in the world are picking their nose right now? Weinstein and Adam 'guesstimate' the answer to this problem and 79 others, covering chemistry, physics, biology and history. The book is a step-by-step guide to problem-solving using rough-and-ready maths, the kind done on the back of a cocktail napkin. And the authors have kindly left additional questions at the end to get readers started on their own problem-solving expedition.
(Cosmos )

Physics educators can use this book as a guide to including the important skill of estimation in their courses. Students may find the power of estimation to be a valuable skill and will want to work their way through this book.
(Arthur Eisenkrafr American Journal of Physics )

A source of imaginative problems, this book would make a nice addition to a mathematics department library.
(Diane Resek Mathematics Teacher )

Review
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" )

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First Sentence
STEP 1: Write down the answer [4]. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover

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2 Reviews 5 star:  (2) 4 star:    (0) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   2 of 2 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, 24 Oct 2008 A Kid's Review This is well written and thoroughly entertaining. I recommend it to anyone, especially those who are likely to have interviews soon. These kind of questions come up a lot. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   1 of 1 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Exercise your brain cells, be prepared for astoundment!, 18 April 2009 By  Mr. Christopher Wallace "wallaceprime" (London) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    I've only been reading (or rather solving problems from) this book for the last hour, and it's already got me hooked. Each of the hundred or so problems listed in this book states the problem (e.g. 'How many cells are there in the human body?'), gives several hints printed upside-down on the same page (such as 'A really big cell is about the smallest object you can see') and then gives a fully worked answer when you turn over the page. By the way, in the spirit of this book, I didn't actually count 100 problems: I guesstimated 3 pages per problem in a 300 page book. Basic maths is needed, but the author gives full instruction on using scientific notation to keep the calculations easier (e.g. instead of writing the result of a million multiplied by a million as 1,000,000,000,000 you would write it as 10 to the power of 12 to represent 1 followed by 12 zeros). The governing principle in picking the values to use in calculations is to pick things you have a resonable idea about above and below what your guesstimating. An example might be guessing the weight of a large lorry. You know it's going to be more than one car, say a ton, but less than a hundred cars (100 tons). Going inbetween gives either 50 tons (roughly mid-way) or 10 tons (as a geometric mean). Either way, it's good enough for a calculation where you're aiming to be accurate within a factor of ten (i.e. no more than ten times bigger or smaller than the actual value). The author writes in an informal, non-mathematically threatening way that just makes you want to go straight on to the next problem. For me, so far, the highlight has been working out the kinetic energy of a continent - not what I was expecting at all! This book is for the enquiring masses, unlike '200 Puzzling Physics Problems' which is strictly for the physicists Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 2 customer reviews...		Ad feedback   Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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