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Old 03-24-2012, 09:59 PM  
raymor
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Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 3,745
It's funny that despite her ignorance and seeming inability to comprehend when it's explained, she computes a Fermi approximation and gets the right answer, using the same method used by nuclear physists and others.

Having an estimate of how long it takes her to run a mile and estimating the multiplier for the speed of the car, she estimates the car will travel "about 78 miles" in an hour. She is of course right, 80 miles IS about 78 miles.

A Fermi approximation like she uses tends to be fairly accurate due to the binomial distribution of error in the estimated terms, such that errors cancel each other out. So that's exactly the right way to think about such a question when you don't know the answer. She's a pretty smart moron.

Last edited by raymor; 03-24-2012 at 10:01 PM..
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