ESP Biography

How many blades of grass are on a typical suburban lawn? How much water do you use over a lifetime? How much does the U.S. population spend on gas each year? Do these questions seem impossible to answer, or nearly so? You can’t count every blade of grass or keep track of every drop of water (well, you can try, but I bet you have better things to do). In this class, we’ll learn how to get quick and dirty answers to these types of problems, using what are called “back of the envelope” estimates. In doing so, we’ll learn about more than just simple estimation. We’ll figure out how to solve problems with very little information, just by drawing on what you already know. We’ll get a real feel for incredibly big and small numbers. And, even for unfamiliar problems we don’t know the answers to, we’ll pick up the tools to tell the difference between what is reasonable, and what is totally ridiculous.

How many blades of grass are on a typical suburban lawn? How much water do you use over a lifetime? How much does the U.S. population spend on gas each year? Do these questions seem impossible to answer, or nearly so? You can’t count every blade of grass or keep track of every drop of water (well, you can try, but I bet you have better things to do). In this class, we’ll learn how to get quick and dirty answers to problems like the ones above, using what are called “back of the envelope” estimates. In doing so, we’ll learn about more than just simple estimation. We’ll figure out how to solve problems with very little information, just by drawing on what you already know. We’ll get a real feel for incredibly big and small numbers. And, even for unfamiliar problems we don’t know the answers to, we’ll pick up the tools to tell the difference between what is reasonable, and what is totally ridiculous.