Fermi’s seem essential for business to me. Others agree; they’re taught in standard MBA programs. For example:
Can our business (or our non-profit) afford to hire an extra person right now? E.g., if they require the same training time before usefulness that others required, will they bring in more revenue in time to make up for the loss of runway?
If it turns out that product X is a success, how much money might it make—is it enough to justify investigating the market?
Is it cheaper (given the cost of time) to use disposable dishes or to wash the dishes?
Is it better to process payments via paypal or checks, given the fees involved in paypal vs. the delays, hassles, and associated risks of non-payment involved in checks?
And on and on. I use them several times a day for CFAR and they seem essential there.
They’re useful also for one’s own practical life: commute time vs. rent tradeoffs; visualizing “do I want to have a kid? how would the time and dollar cost actually impact me?”, realizing that macademia nuts are actually a cheap food and not an expensive food (once I think “per calorie” and not “per apparent size of the container”), and so on and so on.
Oh, right! I actually did the comute time vs. rent computation when I moved four months ago! And wound up with a surprising enough number that I thought about it very closely, and decided that number was about right, and changed how I was looking for apartments. How did I forget that?
realizing that macademia nuts are actually a cheap food and not an expensive food (once I think “per calorie” and not “per apparent size of the container”),
But calories aren’t the only thing you care about—the ability to satiate you also matters. (Seed oil is even cheaper per calorie.)
Fermi’s seem essential for business to me. Others agree; they’re taught in standard MBA programs. For example:
Can our business (or our non-profit) afford to hire an extra person right now? E.g., if they require the same training time before usefulness that others required, will they bring in more revenue in time to make up for the loss of runway?
If it turns out that product X is a success, how much money might it make—is it enough to justify investigating the market?
Is it cheaper (given the cost of time) to use disposable dishes or to wash the dishes?
Is it better to process payments via paypal or checks, given the fees involved in paypal vs. the delays, hassles, and associated risks of non-payment involved in checks?
And on and on. I use them several times a day for CFAR and they seem essential there.
They’re useful also for one’s own practical life: commute time vs. rent tradeoffs; visualizing “do I want to have a kid? how would the time and dollar cost actually impact me?”, realizing that macademia nuts are actually a cheap food and not an expensive food (once I think “per calorie” and not “per apparent size of the container”), and so on and so on.
Oh, right! I actually did the comute time vs. rent computation when I moved four months ago! And wound up with a surprising enough number that I thought about it very closely, and decided that number was about right, and changed how I was looking for apartments. How did I forget that?
Thanks!
But calories aren’t the only thing you care about—the ability to satiate you also matters. (Seed oil is even cheaper per calorie.)