Guesstimation 2.0: Solving Today's Problems on the Back of a Napkin - Paperback

by Lawrence Weinstein (Author), Patricia Edwards (Illustrator)

Simple and effective techniques for quickly estimating virtually anything

Guesstimation 2.0 reveals the simple and effective techniques needed to estimate virtually anything--quickly--and illustrates them using an eclectic array of problems. A stimulating follow-up to Guesstimation, this is the must-have book for anyone preparing for a job interview in technology or finance, where more and more leading businesses test applicants using estimation questions just like these.

The ability to guesstimate on your feet is an essential skill to have in today's world, whether you're trying to distinguish between a billion-dollar subsidy and a trillion-dollar stimulus, a megawatt wind turbine and a gigawatt nuclear plant, or parts-per-million and parts-per-billion contaminants. Lawrence Weinstein begins with a concise tutorial on how to solve these kinds of order of magnitude problems, and then invites readers to have a go themselves. The book features dozens of problems along with helpful hints and easy-to-understand solutions. It also includes appendixes containing useful formulas and more.

Guesstimation 2.0 shows how to estimate everything from how closely you can orbit a neutron star without being pulled apart by gravity, to the fuel used to transport your food from the farm to the store, to the total length of all toilet paper used in the United States. It also enables readers to answer, once and for all, the most asked environmental question of our day: paper or plastic?

Back Jacket

"This is an absolutely great book, a worthy sequel to Guesstimation. The breadth of scope of the problems is truly impressive. Weinstein's arguments are always convincing and, in many cases, very clever. His sense of humor provides a pain-free tutorial on how analysts can make real progress in understanding vaguely defined problems."--Paul J. Nahin, author of Number-Crunching: Taming Unruly Computational Problems from Mathematical Physics to Science Fiction

"Guesstimation 2.0 is an entertaining read, with the added attraction that it can be consumed in small portions by opening it on almost any page. I can easily see having this book close by and returning to it again and again."--Mark Levi, author of Why Cats Land on Their Feet: And 76 Other Physical Paradoxes and Puzzles

Author Biography

Lawrence Weinstein is University Professor of Physics at Old Dominion University. He is the coauthor of Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin (Princeton). Patricia Edwards is senior lecturer in art at Old Dominion University. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, she lives in Norfolk, Virginia.