TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

Ask HN: How/where to find Fermi problems with solutions for IQ experiment?

2 pointsby legalizemoneyover 2 years ago
I want to try an n=1 experiment where I do a random Fermi problem in some time limit, once or twice a day. After several days of this, I&#x27;d like to graph my estimation error over time, to see the effect of practice on my performance. I could even try varying certain treatments, like caffeine or chattering background noise, to test their effects on my estimation error, after adjusting for the practice effect.<p>Some Fermi problems are straightforward to verify - the classic &quot;piano tuners in Chicago&quot; was answered with a phone book. Others can only be verified with another expert&#x27;s estimate, and the question might be too obscure for an Internet search to yield an instance where an expert had already done the math. I think I need a source of Fermi problems that I know a priori to be verifiable.<p>* To verify that a question has a solution, I usually have to do a Google search, which exposes me to the answer.<p>* If I search for a new one each day, I fear I would quickly become biased towards selecting easier questions.<p>* If, before starting the experiment, I cobble results together across many Google searches that seem likely to be verifiable, I fear I would have more days to dwell on the ones I do later in the experiment, exaggerating the practice effect.<p>Does anyone have any advice?

no comments

no comments