wellinghall | (no subject)

This is a quiz from this month's issue of The Actuary mgazine. For each of the pairs given below, which is larger - or are they roughly the same?

[Poll #1770677]

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From:

lil-shepherd.livejournal.com

And every one a total guess!

From:

inamac.livejournal.com

I suspect that they're all about the same (given that the numbers in most cases vary), but have gone with guesses just for fun. Did not even look up the cricket/golf one (though I wondered why I know the standard size of golf balls (British and American) but not gold holes...)

From:

nineveh-uk.livejournal.com

I ticked grains of rice, but I think I'm wrong.

From:

atreic.livejournal.com

No of grains of rice in a 1kg bag v No of runners in the 2011 London Marathon

Hmm, no idea. I'd guess rice. Because a grain of rice must weigh much less than a gram, so 5 grains of rice to a gram would be 5,000 grains of rice in a 1kg bag. It feels like more than that though.

Doesn't the start of the London marathon last for 3 hours from 4 different points? And a line of people across a road is at least 20 people. So 20 people a second from 3 starts for 3 hours would be 3600 a minute, which would be 700,000 people. That's clearly ridiculous, that's one person in 60 running the London Marathon every year.

Lets look this up.

Wikipedia gives the mass of a grain of rice as 25mg, and lots of the rest of the internet agrees. Gooling directly for grains of rice in 1 kg gives 36,500 grams, which agrees (25mg -> 40 grains in a gram, -> 40,000 grains in a kg)

Wikipedia has the 2010 number of marathon runners, as 36.500. And the BBC news article for the 2011 marathon has them down as 36,500.

I wonder if it is a deliberate trick question! And will they all be like that? Anyway, I think it is too close to call, and depends on the bag of rice.

From:

atreic.livejournal.com

No of words in the Bible vs No of cars built in the UK in 2010

My Bible is about 1400 pages, but it's teeny tiny text. Maybe 40 words on a line with 30 lines on a page? That would be 1,680,000 words. There are 66 books, each one has maybe 25 chapters, each chapter has 40 verses, each verse 20 words??? That gives 1,320,000. I am feeling like this is a slight underestimate.

I know nothing about UK car industry. I am not sure I could even work out the number of cars bought in the UK, and then I don't know if we are net importers or exporters. But we are about 40 million people, and we probably get new cars more than once ever 20 years, but we probably mostly buy foreign cars... I don't think we make many cars at all. [I don't even know how you'd define this - what about vans and trucks etc?]

I'd guess bibles.

Lets look it up.

The first wiki hit is for _unique_ words in the bible which is an interesting answer to the question (and 12,143 in the KJV) The same website gives the number of words in the KJV as 783,137
http://agards-bible-timeline.com/q10_bible-facts.html
Another website claims 774,746, and another 790,930, and another 807,361. So I think we have the ball park agreed on. And *blush* I over estimated by a factor of 2. Obviously it appears to depend on the bible.

Apparently, according to some random person on a car forum, the UK produced 1,534,500 cars in 2007. That seems ridiculous. But then reading the list of car manufacturers in the UK on Wikipedia it is quite impressive - mini, rolls-royce, lotus, MG. etc. Wikipedia claims 1,450,000 passenger vehicles in 2008, so I think that's a good order of magnitude.

Wow, cars beat bibles. I would never have guessed that.

From:

atreic.livejournal.com

Diameter in inches of a golf hole v Max breadth in inches of a cricket bat
Which dimension is the bredth of a cricket bat? I feel it's obvious that cricket bats are wider than golf holes are, although the fact that I think it is obvious and these are easy things to compare makes me think it's a trick question and they're the same.

Let's look it up.

A golf hole is 4 and a quarter inches. Everyone agrees on that, apparently it's famous.
Apparently cricket bats come in different sizes. I wouldn't have guessed that either. If anything, I'd have expected variable holes and standard cricket bats! Ah, wikipedia comes up trumps: Law 6 of the Laws of Cricket as the rules of the game are known, limit the size of the bat to not more than 38 in (965 mm) long and the blade may not be more than 4.25 in

Hah, it was a trick question :-)

From:

atreic.livejournal.com

No of pints in an Olympic standard swimming pool v No of people in Tanzania

I don’t even know how big an Olympic standard swimming pool is. 50m by 25m? And if it was 3m deep that would be 3750 m^3. A metre cubed of water is, err, a nice round number of liters that I don’t know. I know it’s really clever and 1gram of water is one ml which is a cm cubed??? No, I have forgotten all this. A meter cubed of water would therefore be 1,000,000 cm cubed, which would be 1,000,000 ml and so 1,000 liters. And a liter of water is a pint and three quarters (I know that!). So my best guess is 6,500,000 pints of water.

I have no idea how big Tanzania is or how many people it has. Or indeed where it is. Australia? 5 million people is the West Midlands. I’m going to guess that the West Midlands has more people than Tanzania and hence the swimming pool wins.

Let’s look it up.

Wow, it really is 50 x 25. With a minimum depth of 2m, and a minimum volume of 2,500m^3 and thus 2,500,000 liters of water. I am feeling a bit smug now. A meter cubed of water really is a 1000 liters too :-) So I just need to put that into pints… 4,399,400 pints. Although again clearly the Olympic pool _could_ be deeper, it’s a minimum.

Hmm, Tanzania. Apparently Tanzania is not Tasmania. But the best estimation of population on wikipedia is 43,739,000 people, and at the last census there were 34,000,000. Clearly 10 times as many as pints in the swimming pool *blush*

From:

atreic.livejournal.com

No of hairs on my head v No of employees on the Indian state railway

Again, I am very stupid. I know there are lots of hairs on your head (millions) and that the Indian state railway is the biggest employer in the world, ish. But no idea. I’m guessing hairs, but I have no idea. I do know it depends on the colour of your hair, at least according to the whizzkids handbook when I was a kid.

Apparently the wisdom of the internet thinks that there are about 100,000 hairs, and it does depend on colour. And about 1.6 million employees of the Indian railway. Actually, the text on wikipedia says ‘It is one of the world's largest commercial or utility employers, with more than 1.6 million employees’ and the table says ‘Employees, 390,000’. I wonder what causes the difference? But either way far more than hairs.

What did we used to do without the internet?

From:

jane-somebody.livejournal.com

I was just going to guess 'same' for all of them (because I have a suspicious mind and therefore tend to think everything *might* be a trick question) but want to thank atreic for saving me the trouble of looking anything up, and laying it all out so clearly :-)