How many licks?

By Aaron Santos

Subjects: Probabilities, Estimation theory, Mathematics

Description: "Rounding off. Sizing up.... Every day we make simple estimations about time, distance, probabilities, and other familiar number concepts. But what about the really big and really small numbers? The kind of numbers that you need to figure out the off-the-wall questions that we amuse ourselves with: Can you really dig your way out of prison with just a spoon? How many years till the Earth is covered in graves? What if you threw a house party and everyone on Earth came... Health issues aside, can a student really afford to live on just ramen noodles for a year? In How Many Licks? physicist Aaron Santos poses fun and far-out problems to demonstrate the user-friendly Fermi method of approximations."--P. [4] of cover.