Estimation & sizing questions.
68 estimation & sizingquestions from the bank — open to read. Pick one and practice it out loud; a coach note comes back in seconds.
Learn the ideas first
All 68 questions
Estimate how many YouTube videos are uploaded per minute globally.How many cups of coffee does a typical Starbucks store sell in a day?Estimate the total revenue of all NYC bagel shops in a typical year.Estimate the total weight of all the food consumed in the US in a single day.How many flights are in the air over the continental US at any given moment?Estimate the annual ad spend on a major social platform's home feed. What's your confidence level?How many gym memberships are sold in the US in January?Estimate the total amount of cash that's withdrawn from US ATMs in a typical week.How many windows are in your hotel chain's flagship building? Walk me through your estimate.Estimate Amazon's daily package delivery count in the US. Then sanity-check against any anchor you can think of.How many songs are streamed on Spotify per day?Estimate the number of unique paying customers a typical mid-market SaaS company has.How much energy does a major data center use in a year?Estimate how many pages of US legal opinions are published in a year.Estimate the GDP contribution of all the AI startups founded in the last 24 months.How many people visit a typical national park in a peak summer week?Estimate the number of credit card transactions processed in the US during the Black Friday weekend.Estimate the total dollars spent on home renovation in the US in a year. Then check it against any cross-reference you can think of.How many doctors' appointments happen in the US in a typical week?Estimate the total developer hours spent annually maintaining open-source code globally.Estimate the number of pizzas delivered in NYC on a typical Friday evening.Estimate how much money venture capital firms collectively invested in seed-stage AI startups last year.Estimate the total miles driven by Uber drivers in a single city in a day.Estimate the number of emails sent by a typical knowledge-worker in a year.Estimate how many days it would take to repaint every surface in a 200,000-square-foot office building.Estimate the total US revenue of dog grooming services. Then check it against pet ownership statistics if you can.How much storage does a single hour of a popular streaming video service occupy globally?Estimate the total number of square feet of office space in Manhattan.Estimate the number of meals served by all McDonald's globally in a single day.Estimate the annual cost to a major airline of fuel for its widebody fleet. Where would your answer be most fragile?Estimate how many gallons of gasoline are sold at a typical suburban gas station in a week.How many tennis balls fit inside a school bus? State your key assumptions clearly.Estimate the number of smartphones currently in use in California. Does your answer pass a basic sanity check against the state's population?A movie theater has 8 screens. Estimate total ticket revenue for a typical Saturday. Walk me through your mental math.Estimate the number of pizzas delivered in Manhattan on a typical Friday night.How many electric vehicle charging stations currently exist in California? Walk me through your reasoning.Estimate the total number of credit card transactions processed in the US on Black Friday.How many data centers does AWS operate globally? Give me your best estimate and confidence interval.Estimate the number of ride-share trips taken in Los Angeles during a typical weekday.How many customer support tickets does a major airline handle per day? Sanity-check your answer.Estimate the total square footage of warehouse space Amazon uses in the US.How many prescriptions are filled at US pharmacies in a typical day?Estimate the number of active software engineers currently employed at Google worldwide.How many baby diapers are sold in the US each year? Walk through your assumptions.Estimate the total value of venture capital deployed in the US last year. What's your confidence level?How many hours of content does Netflix add to its platform each month globally?Estimate the number of gallons of gasoline sold at US gas stations on a typical summer day.How many job applications does a Fortune 500 company receive per year? Sanity-check against hiring volume.Estimate the total number of hotel rooms available in Las Vegas.How many lines of code are in the Windows operating system? Give me a range and explain your reasoning.Estimate the number of MRI scans performed in the US each day.How many smartphones are currently in active use worldwide? Walk me through your estimate.Estimate the total annual revenue of all McDonald's locations in the US.How many cybersecurity incidents does a major bank detect and respond to each month?Estimate the number of shipping containers that pass through the Port of Los Angeles each day. Then sanity-check it.How many patents does IBM file globally in a typical year? Give me your best estimate and confidence interval.Estimate the total number of employees working in investment banking across all Wall Street firms.How many tons of plastic waste does the US generate each year?Estimate the number of API calls Stripe processes per second during peak shopping hours. What assumptions are you making?Estimate the total annual fee revenue of the US mutual fund and ETF industry.Estimate the assets a typical US financial advisor manages for clients.Your firm cuts the expense ratio on a $500 billion index fund family by 2 basis points. Estimate the revenue impact, and how much new AUM it takes to offset it.Estimate the total assets held in US 401(k) plans.Estimate how many homes are sold in the United States in a year, and the total commission pool that creates.A 280-unit apartment building opens in a metro of one million people. Estimate a reasonable monthly absorption rate and how long it takes to reach 95% occupancy.A rental house costs $380,000 and rents for $2,400 a month. Roughly, in your head: what's the gross yield, and does it cash-flow with 20% down at a 7% mortgage?Estimate the total square footage of office space in Manhattan, and sanity-check your answer from a second direction.Estimate how many licensed real estate agents are active in the US, and what share closed more than five transactions last year. Be explicit about your confidence in each step.