What are your benchmarks for estimating/comprehending quantities? I'm terrible with magnitudes; if someone tells me that they weigh 85kg, or that they come from a city of 2 million people, this doesn't create a mental picture for me at all; they might as well be speaking another language. After a lifetime of being resigned to this, I've decided I'm going to familiarise myself with a list of benchmark quantities: my height, the height of my tallest friend, population of my city, etc. Help me compile a list of quantities I should be familiar with, and tips for learning to come to grips with quantities! [more inside]
posted by surenoproblem on Oct 31, 2009 - 26 answers

AquaticNecromancyFilter: Combined, the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley employ about 3500 uniformed police officers. Do they outnumber the army that could be raised by dark magic from the floor of the San Francisco Bay? Approximately how many entire sets of human skeletal remains are there in that body of water, considering disasters, shipwrecks, bridge jumpers, tidal movement of sediment, etc.? [more inside]
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur on Aug 13, 2008 - 21 answers

How much was that stuff worth? I have to prepare a fairly precise net worth statement for Sept 93 on short notice. Most is easily pulled off old statements, but how do I come up with a solid fair market valuation for household/personal goods? It's peak tax season, so impossible to get an fast answer from an accountant. The only obvious calculator just throws validation errors. [more inside]
posted by nakedcodemonkey on Mar 28, 2008 - 3 answers

How do you judge large horizontal or vertical distances visually, with no (or few) other objects around to compare as a reference? [more inside]
posted by brain cloud on Jan 16, 2008 - 14 answers

WisdomOfCrowdsFilter: I read a theory smewhere that there's a peculiar thing that happens when you ask a group of people to estimate something. As I remember it, there's something about the magic number of 50%, but I'm not wholly sure how this works. The idea was basically that when at least 50% of the individuals were estimating properly in some way, the average estimate would eventually converge on the true value, but when less then 50% of the individuals estimated properly, widely divergent values would emerge. Essentially, more then 50% or _something_ produced good estimates, less then 50% produced estimates that were substantially worse than those produced by just one individual. I've spent some time with Google and Wikipedia on Estimation and Delphi methods, but to no avial. Any mifites know what I'm talking about?
posted by zachlipton on Apr 21, 2007 - 19 answers

I need a link to tables of costs of software projects to help me estimate cost. [more inside]
posted by uni verse on Jan 16, 2006 - 0 answers