Wordle 1,569 3/6
Wordle 1,569 3/6
spoilers
I answered this whilst one was flying near me
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Fermi Question of the Day: âHow many school buses were in service in the United States as of 2024?â
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is there a method to this or is it just ballparking
Fermi Question of the Day: âHow many school buses were in service in the United States as of 2024?â
this moron missed a zero on the 3rd go
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Finally caught up to E10: Nocturna. Six POVs⊠Welp. I gotta start somewhere.
List of POVs and Episodes
âŠI donât know how, but POV2 E10 appears to be hidden. Itâs not in the âpast broadcastsâ section, but it is somehow present as the only VOD under the âhighlightsâ section. ((Look man, I ainât complaininâ as long as I can witness the stories.))
Woke up at vagabond camp. Edward visited. Talked with Branwen about outside world (e.g., ocean). Haldvar/Stiorra gave something to Gwen, before the brothers and Gwen head back to the fort. ((Ah, yes. Rest at camp are sparring harshly.)) Gwen noticed she might be able to slip through the gatesâ sides. ((Mightâve been OOC.))
One of the goats found. Theo concerned about Gwenâs neck. Gave [the thing] to Theo. Breakfast at coven. Went to Tetch, get people for northern gathering. Went to hospital, Dr. Robin concerned about Rueâs activities, spreading info about (confidential) hospital activities. Will be handled.
Sir Tom concerned about Gwenâs neck. Gave Sir Tom chamomile flower seeds. Northern gathering. Rue went off on her own for a moment. Found other coven goat Gertrude alive.
please see the name of the game
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Fermi Question of the Day: âHow many school buses were in service in the United States as of 2024?â
huh.
im illiterate
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Fermi Question of the Day: âHow many school buses were in service in the United States as of 2024?â
Rewatching The Gaslight District.
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Wordle 1,569 2/6
thereâs a method to it but the method is basically just ballparking + trying to make errors in both directions in the hopes that theyâll cancel out
basically, if you just try to guess the number, you might be totally wrong, but you can estimate quantities that are related to the number, and that can get you ~close enough
more detailed example using today's problem (spoilers, obviously)
so todayâs question is:
How many school buses were in service in the United States as of 2024?
I figure basically ~all the school buses are going to be used transporting students to school, right? So I started with an estimate of the US population + what fraction of that population is school-aged. I know off the top of my head that the US populationâs a little under 350 million, and I vaguely remembered that around a quarter of that is under 18 [the true value is apparently 22%]. Not all of those under-18-year-olds are school aged, so I decided to round down to 300 million rather than up to 350 like I usually do, and then just take 25% of that [in hindsight I couldâve just estimated the fraction of under-18-year-olds that are also under-school-aged 
]. So that gave me 75 million school-aged kids. Obviously thereâs some 18-year-olds in school, and some people who drop out before 18, but my guess was that those wouldnât make a huge difference. [just now I looked up the actual value to see how close I was and apparently the actual value is 54.1 million school aged children in the US, so my number was a bit of an overestimate]
So then I needed to figure out how many buses you need to get your kids to school. In my elementary school the capacity of a schoolbus was theoretically considered to be like 70ish? but they usually didnât fill it up all the way, and youâve probably got some buses that are really under-full bringing down the average. So I estimated that they were maybe putting 50-ish kids on the bus per trip. 50 was partially chosen to be really easy to work with mathematically. And then school districts generally stagger their start times so that they can have the same buses bringing people to multiple different schools â in the area where I grew up it could be either 2 âshiftsâ or 3 âshiftsâ depending on the district. I decided to round up to 3 shifts rather than down to 2 shifts because my calculations werenât accounting for the fact that some students donât ride the school buses at all. (I think in hindsight rounding up to 3 might not even have been sufficient to account for this? Iâd forgotten that some people⊠live within walking distance of their school⊠and this is actually not uncommonâŠ). Anyways, 75 million students and 3 shifts means that thereâs going to be about 25 million students per shift. Divide that by 50 students per bus, 25 million/5 is 5 million, divided by 10 is 500,000. The true value is apparently 451,000 so my answer was within 20%. Sometimes I bump my answer a little bit up or down before submitting if Iâm pretty sure I erred too far in one direction or the other, but I didnât do that this time.
So as you can see, I made a lot of wild guesses about the numbers, didnât account for some major factors, and didnât account for lots of minor factors, and it worked out regardless! It doesnât always work out quite this nicely but Iâm not usually off by, like, an order of magnitude.
If I donât get it right on the first try I use the different color arrows to help narrow down what sort of numbers it makes sense to guess next.
As an example of a question where I made a significant estimation error: for the âhow many pigsâ one, I forgot to account for the fact that pigs are generally alive for multiple months before being slaughtered. My answer would still have been substantially off accounting for that, but significantly less off. Once I read that hint I literally just took my most recent guess, multiplied by 6, and had the answer. Sometimes I also run into issues if thereâs a quantity that I just have no idea how to estimate â Iâve been pretty lucky with the country ones so far, they havenât all been populations that I know offhand* but there havenât been any where Iâm like âidfk. could be anywhere between like 1 million and like 100 million!â which is the sort of thing that would make this method significantly worse.
* I just checked and Germany has more than twice as many people as I thought, wowee
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Itâs like one of those consultant questions.
yes exactly
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ohmygod
Fermi Question of the Day: âHow many school buses were in service in the United States as of 2024?â
Gwen noticed oddity about terrain, and rubbed it off as âbeing directionally challengedâ. Oliver making map of surrounding area, door open if need a talk. [DM issue, new instance.] Gertrude liked Haldvar. Haldvar asked for water to wash off bear guts. ((Is that still from E9 or is that from this session?)) Vinitrine told Gwen to participate in Nocturna.
Talk with Evie, Gwen needed to rest. Oliver didnât drink for last couple of days, Evie thought he was scared. He had a tattoo on his neck. Something about an eye he feared. Talked about change. Sir Tom gave clean elder root to Evie as gift, and knew its usage (perfume, tonics, etc.).
Vinitrine gave chocolate to Gwen. Eliza, at stall, concerned about Gwenâs neck. Bought necklace. Chat with Stiorra, went to coven together with Theo. Coven basement has âlocked doorâ. Theo had shared her bed (in the basement) with one man in the past, with one Alek Ander(?).
âŠIâm gonna chalk this up as girls talk. Stiorra wanted Gwen to change first. Changed dress with Vin. Vin wore two-piece; bare stomach. ((âŠStiorraâs marking on her face. The á symbol. Itâs missing the left branch.))
Fermi Question of the Day: âHow many school buses were in service in the United States as of 2024?â