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A comment on Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions. Parent comment

Re:Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Qu... by dogecoinbase on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @12:41AM (#17965604)
I love the term "Fermi problem", because the origin is, of course, the Fermi paradox. The idea that multiplying a series of uncertainties together does something other than blow your error range out is such a weird idea.
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Re:Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Qu... by MagnumOpus on Friday September 14, 2018 @09:31AM (#17987026)
> The idea that multiplying a series of uncertainties together does something other than blow your error range out is such a weird idea

Might seem weird but it is massively useful. Having an educated estimate that is _only_ out by an order of magnitude is a massive improvement over wild-ass guesses that are 4-5 orders of magnitude off -- especially in systems design where over- or under-provisioning leads to millions wasted in effort.

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Re:Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Qu... by rumcajz on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @11:31PM (#17975757)
Related: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404
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