Guesstimation :Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin

Publication subTitle :Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin

Author: Weinstein Lawrence;Adam John A.;;  

Publisher: Princeton University Press‎

Publication year: 2009

E-ISBN: 9781400824441

P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780691129495

Subject: O211.67 Expectation and Prediction

Keyword: 体育,文化、科学、教育、体育,经济计划与管理

Language: ENG

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Description

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 porta

Chapter

3.4 Throwing in the towel

3.5 Hey buddy, can you fill a dome?

3.6 A mole of cats

3.7 Massive MongaMillions

3.8 Tons of trash

3.9 Mt. Trashmore

3.10 Juggling people

3.11 Shelving the problem

4 Animals and People

4.1 More numerous than the stars in the sky

4.2 Laboring in vein

4.3 Unzipping your skin

4.4 Hair today, gone tomorrow

4.5 Hot dawg!

4.6 Playing the field

4.7 Ewww . . . gross!

4.8 Going potty

4.9 Let's get one thing straight!

5 Transportation

5.1 Driving past Saturn

5.2 Drowning in gasoline

5.3 Slowly on the highway

5.4 Rickshaws and automobiles

5.5 Horse exhaust

5.6 Tire tracks

5.7 Working for the car

6 Energy and Work

6.1 Energy of height

6.1.1 Mountain climbing

6.1.2 Flattening the Alps

6.1.3 Raising a building

6.2 Energy of motion

6.2.1 At your service

6.2.2 Kinetic trucking

6.2.3 Racing continents

6.2.4 "To boldly go . . . "

6.3 Work

6.3.1 Crash!

6.3.2 Spider-Man and the subway car

7 Hydrocarbons and Carbohydrates

7.1 Chemical energy

7.1.1 Energy in gasoline

7.1.2 Battery energy

7.1.3 Battery energy density

7.1.4 Batteries vs. gas tanks

7.2 Food is energy

7.2.1 Eat here, get gas

7.2.2 Farmland for ethanol

7.3 Power!

7.3.1 Hot humans

7.3.2 Fill 'er up with gasoline

7.3.3 Fill 'er up with electricity

8 The Earth, the Moon, and Lots of Gerbils

8.1 "And yet it moves" (e pur si muove)

8.2 Duck!

8.3 Super-sized Sun

8.4 Sun power

8.5 Gerbils 1, Sun 0

8.6 Chemical Sun

8.7 Nearby supernova

8.8 Melting ice caps

9 Energy and the Environment

9.1 Power to the people

9.2 Continental power

9.3 Solar energy

9.4 Land for solar energy

9.5 Tilting at windmills

9.6 The power of coal

9.7 The power of nuclei

9.8 Hard surfaces

10 The Atmosphere

10.1 Into thin air

10.2 Ancient air

10.3 Suck it up

10.4 CO[sub(2)] from coal

10.5 A healthy glow

10.6 CO[sub(2)] from cars

10.7 Turning gas into trees

10.8 Turning trees into gas

11 Risk

11.1 Gambling on the road

11.2 The plane truth

11.3 Life's a beach

11.4 Up in smoke

12 Unanswered Questions

A: Needed Numbers and Formulas

A.1 Useful Numbers

A.2 Handy Formulas

A.3 Metric Prefixes

B: Pegs to Hang Things On

Bibliography

Index

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

K

L

M

N

O

P

R

S

T

V

W

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