Mental Math & Estimation · Interview Question
Fermi estimate: gallons of gasoline consumed in the US per day?
How to answer
~330M people, ~2×10^8 light vehicles driven daily, ~30 mi/day at ~25 mpg = 1.2 gal/car/day. 2×10^8 × 1.2 ≈ 2.4×10^8 gal/day. True figure ~3.7×10^8 gal/day (~9M barrels), so within ~1.5× — solid. State assumptions explicitly and keep to 1 sig fig.
Key idea: Carrying false precision and not stating assumptions. Round aggressively to 1 sig fig and reason out loud.
More: Quant interview prep · Quant salary
Related Mental Math & Estimation questions
- 25 horses, races of 5 at a time, no clock. Minimum races to find the top 3, and why exactly that many?
- Approximate e^0.05 and e^x for small x. What's the rule?
- Convert 7/8 and 5/16 to decimals instantly. Why memorize the eighths/sixteenths table for timed rounds?
- Convert between log base 2 and base 10 in your head. What's log2(10)?