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How Many Licks?: Or, How to Estimate Damn Near Anything Paperback – August 25, 2009

3.8 out of 5 stars 19 customer reviews

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 176 pages
  • Publisher: Running Press (August 25, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0762435607
  • ISBN-13: 978-0762435609
  • Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,016,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

Format: Kindle Edition
First off let me say that the topics chosen as illustrative examples are hilarious. There is just the right mix of geekiness and human interest. That being said I had hoped to read more about what constitutes a reasonable assumption since I was already competent at dimensional analysis. This book is just a collection of entertaining examples.

In addition the Kindle edition has very poor proofreading. Several words are missing letters and these errors could have been caught simply by running a spelling check. I am disappointed.
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Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
I'm not sure what I was expecting when I ordered this book, but I must admit that the clincher (for me, anyway) was the set of example questions listed on the product description - you have to admit, they were funny and intriguing.

Having read the book, I don't think I'm much better at "estimating damn near anything". In the first chapter, the book gives you some advice on how to start addressing a question - any question of approximation - and the rest of the book provides many exercises.

The gist of advice on approximating anything is: take a guess! How many dirt bike racers are in New York? Well, round up the total population of New York, apply exponential notation, decide on a reasonable maximum and minimum possible number of racers, etc.

Of course, there are some questions within the book that require knowledge of specific values, such as the elasticity of rubber, the pull of gravity, and the distance between the Earth and the Moon. For these questions you'll find the values at the back of the book. For other such values in real life just hope you paid attention in school.

There is no secret art in guesstimating anything - either take an educated guess or use some degree of common sense. I was hoping for something new to take away from this book, but found very little.

The sample problems presented in the book are great, though, and it has a very good format.
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Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Great book for learning the famous estimation techniques of intellectual giant Enrico Fermi. An absolute must for anyone trying to impersonate a physicist at cocktail parties.
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Format: Paperback
I really enjoyed how the book made math seem fun by answering silly questions. The author also broke down how to do the calculations and gave you the correct answer (just in case you couldn't get it). This is a must for anyone who likes to solve riddles/problems.
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Format: Paperback
More than a great peace of interesting estimations, Santo's book constitutes a very delightful reading. It helps breaking the idea that math is complicated and shows that, even questions that sound randomly difficult to estimate, can in fact be roughly approximated by a sequence of steps known as Fermi method.

I highly recommend it for teachers, students and all science inclined public.
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Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
...but then got repetitive. In all fairness though, I've had a lot of training and experience with estimation so this book might be great for people just learning how to estimate effectively.
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A Kid's Review on January 18, 2011
Format: Paperback
This book is an educational and entertaining one. It describes methods of estimating just about anything in a fun way. It is a great way to learn while having fun. I highly recommend it.
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Mathematical calculations exist everywhere throughout our daily lives, and experiences from adolescence to adulthood mark subconscious, instinctive techniques to crunch and analyze numbers. The perception of mathematics and numbers in society, however, has skewed our desire and willingness to receive information and analyze it in real terms. As a postdoctoral researcher in Chemical Engineering at Michigan University, Dr. Aaron Santos has produced a novel that removes the tiresome, cumbersome, and negative attitude toward mathematics, throwing the reader a plethora of understandable and thought-provoking statistical problems. The inspiration for his work derives from the famous commercial in the 1980's where a cartoon boy asks an owl, "How many licks does it take to get the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?" The answer is comical in the commercial, but in reality, truly how many licks would it take for a child to sit down and attempt? Questions like these may seem nonsensical to the statistical purist, but for the average person, Santos' book shows that you can sit down yourself and enjoy solving application problems - if approached the right way.

Approximation is paramount to the critical thinking of developing children (and elders too!), and Dr. Santos clearly shows that reasoning can be tackled as a "fun game" to play with your mind. Totaling 176 pages, the book focuses upon Enrico Fermi's theoretical approximation through orders of magnitude. This basically means that problems with gigantic scope, such as the number of hair follicles on every citizen of China, can be dwindled down to sensible terms. Santos reminds us that fluid intelligence in a subject is not necessarily required for magnitude problems (although it may help).
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