In Douglas Hofstadter’s article “On number numbness” (published in Scientific American and also in his book Metamagical Themas) he mentions that he did an estimation exercise with one of his (university) classes, asking them to estimate the height of the Empire State Building. The smallest answer: 50 feet. The largest: one mile. (I don’t think he asked them for confidence intervals or anything of the kind.)
(A height of 50 feet means about 6 inches per floor.)
One mile is a believable data point for somebody who knows it’s really tall and has no clue how tall buildings generally are and has no skills in estimating or reasoning to be able to come up with a good estimate, but I think “50 feet” as an estimate is not a legitimate data point. It is much more likely that somebody was being a smart ass, or wanted to screw up the experiment and make Hofstadter look silly, or had never heard of the Empire State Building (assuming Hofstadter didn’t imply that it’s a really tall building) and was just guessing for a random building (which it would still be a bad estimate for, but much less so).
Buildings do become increasingly inefficient as they get taller. For one, more and more space and energy has to be devoted to elevators and other ways to move people vertically. (If you’ve ever played SimTower, you might have some understanding of this phenomenon.) Skyscrapers are a result of too many people and too little horizontal space; in places where land isn’t as expensive as in Manhattan, it’s usually better (and cheaper) to build outward rather than build upward.
In Douglas Hofstadter’s article “On number numbness” (published in Scientific American and also in his book Metamagical Themas) he mentions that he did an estimation exercise with one of his (university) classes, asking them to estimate the height of the Empire State Building. The smallest answer: 50 feet. The largest: one mile. (I don’t think he asked them for confidence intervals or anything of the kind.)
(A height of 50 feet means about 6 inches per floor.)
One mile is a believable data point for somebody who knows it’s really tall and has no clue how tall buildings generally are and has no skills in estimating or reasoning to be able to come up with a good estimate, but I think “50 feet” as an estimate is not a legitimate data point. It is much more likely that somebody was being a smart ass, or wanted to screw up the experiment and make Hofstadter look silly, or had never heard of the Empire State Building (assuming Hofstadter didn’t imply that it’s a really tall building) and was just guessing for a random building (which it would still be a bad estimate for, but much less so).
The experiment took place in classroom in New York, if I recall.
Everything’s up-to-date in Kansas City!
They’ve gone about as fur as they can go.
They went and built a skyscraper seven stories high,
About as high as a building oughta go!
-- from Oklahoma
with apologies to current residents of Kansas City
There may be some truth to this quote.
Buildings do become increasingly inefficient as they get taller. For one, more and more space and energy has to be devoted to elevators and other ways to move people vertically. (If you’ve ever played SimTower, you might have some understanding of this phenomenon.) Skyscrapers are a result of too many people and too little horizontal space; in places where land isn’t as expensive as in Manhattan, it’s usually better (and cheaper) to build outward rather than build upward.