Fermi estimates are attempts to answer a quantitative question using order-of-magnitude style reasoning. These are questions like “How many people fly on airplanes each day?” or “How many atoms are in my arm?”. In contrast to things like calibration practice, these are much more generative, attempting to tie together parts of your world model to come up with a model that answers a question.
On LessWrong, this could be practically implemented by having a set of 100-1000 questions that users can do either in a weekend blitz, or spaced out over time. A user who got 100 correct (within a factor of 2x) could have a sign on their profile indicating that they completed this task. It could also be implemented as a daily/weekly question for users to answer and then compare notes on.
Answer: Fermi Estimates
Fermi estimates are attempts to answer a quantitative question using order-of-magnitude style reasoning. These are questions like “How many people fly on airplanes each day?” or “How many atoms are in my arm?”. In contrast to things like calibration practice, these are much more generative, attempting to tie together parts of your world model to come up with a model that answers a question.
On LessWrong, this could be practically implemented by having a set of 100-1000 questions that users can do either in a weekend blitz, or spaced out over time. A user who got 100 correct (within a factor of 2x) could have a sign on their profile indicating that they completed this task. It could also be implemented as a daily/weekly question for users to answer and then compare notes on.