Fermi Questions C

[bernard]

Question Marathons Explained

[kman1234t]

How many Fermi questions will be attempted by Scioly competitors this season?

Hint - It's at least zero if you are answering this question

[RasmitDevkota]

How many Fermi questions will be attempted by Scioly competitors this season?

Hint - It's at least zero if you are answering this question

Assuming we're counting practice,

Click to Show Answer

5?

[RasmitDevkota]

How many Fermi questions will be attempted by Scioly competitors this season?

Hint - It's at least zero if you are answering this question

Assuming we're counting practice,

Click to Show Answer

5?

[cryo]

Let's see...

Click to Show Answer

SciOly claims that there are 5,500 teams competing. Let's say, on average, a team goes to 2-3 competitions in a year - I think this is about right because invitationals aren't all that common for low-level teams. Each test has around 25 questions on average, so teams answer 3-4 x 10^5 questions at tournaments each season. My guess is teams do a lot of practice questions, but I have no idea how many - I'd say between 1-10x as many as they answer at competitions, but anywhere in that range conveniently rounds the total to 10^6, so my answer would be 6.

[kman1234t]

How many Fermi questions will be attempted by Scioly competitors this season?

Hint - It's at least zero if you are answering this question

Assuming we're counting practice,

Click to Show Answer

5?

My answer was

Click to Show Answer

 6, but 5 also may be correct. I think it has to be 5 or 6. I assumed 5e3 teams in the country, about 8e3 people will be doing fermi (it's a pretty popular event). The average person probably attends 2 tournaments in a given year, and maybe takes 4 practice tests in preperation. At 20 questions per person per test on average(?),  that comes to 1e6 total questions attempted this season.

Anything goes, though! Your turn.

[RasmitDevkota]

My answer was

Click to Show Answer

 6, but 5 also may be correct. I think it has to be 5 or 6. I assumed 5e3 teams in the country, about 8e3 people will be doing fermi (it's a pretty popular event). The average person probably attends 2 tournaments in a given year, and maybe takes 4 practice tests in preperation. At 20 questions per person per test on average(?),  that comes to 1e6 total questions attempted this season.

Anything goes, though! Your turn.

Yeah I can agree with that!

My only difference actually was that (Click to Show Hidden Text)

I was less optimistic about the number of people who would seriously practice for the event (e2 instead of e3), but I do feel like the actual number would be around the border of 5 to 6.

Next question, in the spirit of Meta-Questions: How many tests across all events will be taken this season at competitions?

[cryo]

Similar calculation, I think:

Click to Show Answer

~5000 teams x 2-3 competitions/team (average from previous q, probably about right?) x 12-15 tests per team per competition (19 test events, but an average team is probably 2/3 - 3/4 full) = 1.2-2.25 x 10^5 tests. Unless there's something I'm missing, I think this has to be 5?

[RasmitDevkota]

Similar calculation, I think:

Click to Show Answer

~5000 teams x 2-3 competitions/team (average from previous q, probably about right?) x 12-15 tests per team per competition (19 test events, but an average team is probably 2/3 - 3/4 full) = 1.2-2.25 x 10^5 tests. Unless there's something I'm missing, I think this has to be 5?

Yeah I did the exact same thing, not that complicated I would say.

Your turn!

[cryo]

How many words will Science Olympiad students write this season?
(Disclaimer: I'm not sure if my answer to this is right, but we'll see if y'all agree.)