The average number of bottles of beer opened with a lighter in a given year is _________ (worldwide). No Googling, no paper pen, just give me your best guess within the next minute or two.
I have asked this bit of trivia to dozens of friends and strangers as a mental math estimation exercise. The answer will obviously based on statistics and will have a margin of error. I have received a wide range of guesses from 7 to many billions. It seems people generally have great difficulty in approximation. And some completely lock up and are incapable of even guessing… and surprisingly (or perhaps not so), these are your typical smart guys… math teachers, programmers, engineers, etc.
Maybe this will spawn a whole new domain in IQ tests… Loose math approximation under time constraints. AKA “roughing it in”. Now that I think about it, Google asks these sorts of questions during interviews for a good reason(?).
For the record my guess is 310,000.
Here are a few guesses from my buds…
Sid K: 726,000
Edwin C: 4,000,000,000
Kenneth H: 1,000,000
David B: 480,000
Tina K: 1 Zillion Billion Quintillion
Keith B: 13,000,000
Kevin B: 7
Matt C: 3,257,823
Melissa K: 80,000,000,000
Derek D: 7
Brian E: 10,000,000
Stay tuned for the answer.
*I came up with this bit of trivia at the beach as some idiot tourist was trying to open his stupid glass beer bottle (thanks Corona) by tearing apart the arm rest of a beach rental chair.
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