> It tests for that generic and general ability to estimate anything, and to break down any problem.
Ability to BS and multiply, more or less. Feels like a waste of a question even for the one asking it!
> Yet some people get flabbergasted . . . since they think too much about specifics of each of the numbers they use and how wrong they might be. Basically, they have a hard time of letting go of the inaccuracies :)
Having a hard time letting go of inaccuracies seems justified if you're in a more technical profession. Too often there's good engineering reasons for not wanting to excuse loose reasoning with bad guesses. On the software dev side, there are also too many cases where those kinds of fudged numbers are inevitably used against us.
Being able to tell when highly accurate approach is required and when it is not is as much a quality in a technical profession as being simply accurate is.
Ability to BS and multiply, more or less. Feels like a waste of a question even for the one asking it!
> Yet some people get flabbergasted . . . since they think too much about specifics of each of the numbers they use and how wrong they might be. Basically, they have a hard time of letting go of the inaccuracies :)
Having a hard time letting go of inaccuracies seems justified if you're in a more technical profession. Too often there's good engineering reasons for not wanting to excuse loose reasoning with bad guesses. On the software dev side, there are also too many cases where those kinds of fudged numbers are inevitably used against us.