Suppose you held a contest where the contestants were asked to make estimates on very odd questions. Example might be what is the bio mass of the worlds population of mosquitos? Or, how many murders occur per hour on earth? What is the total weight of every piece of refined steel ever refined?
The accuracy of the answer would not be as important as who got the closest. Say you ran this contest for 10 years with people from all walks of life and at the end of the contest you set aside the most accurate .01 percent.
What skill would these folks likely have in common if properly trained?
I don’t know what you mean by skill (would they all be great dancers? I dunno), but general mental traits might include:
Outstanding mental agility, in terms of being able to do arithmetic and algebra quickly and accurately
Vivid imagination
Strong spatial visualization skills
Incidentally, while I don’t think of myself as the brightest of the bright in general, the kind of contest you postulate here is the exact kind of thing I excel at. And the three traits listed above are ones that I feel I have.
You know what, I may have projected some wrong assumptions onto the OP. :smack:
I took it as, “What is the total body weight of all mosquitoes on Earth? You have 30 seconds to think it over, starting…NOW!” If the contest is actually, “What is the total body weight of all mosquitoes on Earth? You have three months to research it, starting…NOW!” then TriPolar’s answer is much better than mine.
I have a feeling that there are a lot of us out there who do this. I have no idea at all accurate I am at things but find myself working on these problems for no reason I could expalin. I would consider some answers to be excellent if the contestant was only within 10% of accuracy, other things I might like to see closer to 50% to be considered logical.
I liked Tri Poalrs answer as well but your was slightly more in line with what I had in mind when I posed the question.
I actually do this both ways, sometimes while driving I will pose a question to myself and then spend the next few hours trying to work it out, at home I may spend some time trying to identify criteria I need to consider and then do a couple hours research.
An element of luck, sure, but if you’re quick enough at math and visualization, you could probably get in the ballpark a lot easier than someone just taking a completely blind guess.
May not be able to determine? How about absolutely could not determine. If all the questions were like the examples given, there would be no way to know who was closest to the correct answer.
Enrico Fermi delighted in throwing “Fermiquestion” at his students, questions of similar nature to the “total mass of mosquitos” example. (“How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?”) The deal was, he would accept answers within the correct order of magnitude.
Much beyond that, and the variance would disappear into mere noise. No one could conceivably measure that accurately enough to fall within the top .01 percent. At that point, you’ve got nothing more than a luck contest.
It’s like contests where you try to guess the number of jelly beans in a gallon jar. I’ll grant that someone who is careful and methodical might be able to estimate it to within an order of magnitude. But beyond that, it’s only guessing.