Re:The Economics of Dropbox
by edanm on Thursday April 21, 2011 @09:09AM
(#2470463)
Thanks, that's what I was talking about.
Back of the envelope calculations aren't necessarily useful, but they're fun. They let you analyze problems and try and think of all the different moving parts that go into building something - that's why they're so popular in hacker circles. The conclusions are probably useless [1], but the debate and analysis is what you take away.
[1] I can't remember what it's called, but I remember reading a theory (on Wikipedia) that says that people tend to estimate pretty well when they estimate the multiplication of lots of numbers. Mostly because, on average, they make mistakes in both directions (i.e. half the numbers are too high, half are too low).
Back of the envelope calculations aren't necessarily useful, but they're fun. They let you analyze problems and try and think of all the different moving parts that go into building something - that's why they're so popular in hacker circles. The conclusions are probably useless [1], but the debate and analysis is what you take away.
[1] I can't remember what it's called, but I remember reading a theory (on Wikipedia) that says that people tend to estimate pretty well when they estimate the multiplication of lots of numbers. Mostly because, on average, they make mistakes in both directions (i.e. half the numbers are too high, half are too low).