shieldfoss

@shieldfoss

Jobless bum

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shieldfoss
@shieldfoss
lexyeevee
@lexyeevee
lexyeevee
@lexyeevee
GFD
@GFD asked:

how many basketballs do you think there are

ah this is one of those clever interview questions. well i'm pretty good at math so this should be no problem.

first we need to know how many people there are. that's like seven billion now.

next we need to know how many basketballs there are per person. i happen to know that i, a representative sample, own zero basketballs. so that's a reasonable guess

now we simply multiply, and we can conclude that there are approximately zero basketballs in the world. of course this is to one significant figure, so the true answer could be as high as nine

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in reply to @lexyeevee's post:

CHz
@CHz

I came at this one from a different direction

While I don't know the surface area of the Earth off the top of my head, having been through grade school, I of course remember that Eratosthenes calculated the circumference as 2.5 * 10⁵ stadia. The Earth isn't a perfect sphere so this is naturally not completely accurate, but we can calculate the radius as 1.25 * 10⁵ / π stadia and then spitball the surface area as 6.25 * 10¹⁰ / π stadia²

Now, since my house was built by the ancient Greeks in 2007, I happen to know that the area I'm currently in (room + adjoining kitchen) has a floor area of about 1.6 * 10⁻³ stadia². After a careful survey, I have determined that it contains zero basketballs. Multiplying through, we can therefore estimate that the Earth as a whole contains zero basketballs.

I think the fact that we took two very different approaches and came up with the same answer strongly suggests that we are correct

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phi
@phi

I actually had a dreamf where I was playing basketball against a tall lopunny, meowf, so u hav to count thaf one as wew

(altho teh lopunny glitched in midair and I had to redraw them, buf idk if that affects teh count)

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