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> Of course nobody knows exactly how many piano tuners there are in New York, but you could guess about how many piano owners there are, how often a piano needs
by jancsika 5y ago
> Of course nobody knows exactly how many piano tuners there are in New York, but you could guess about how many piano owners there are, how often a piano needs to be tuned, and how many tuners it would take to service this demand.
You don't want to know how often a piano needs to be tuned. You want to know 1) how often the average piano owner pays to get their piano tuned, and 2) how often the outliers (like Julliard) pay to get theirs tuned. For #1, my own ears doubt there's much if any relationship to how often they need to be tuned.
I feel like this is a common problem with this approach-- something about starting the journey leads one to choose an imagined ideal contingency rather than one that is practical. Almost like the deeper you go, the more likely the thing you're guesstimating will be a fantasy.
Edit: clarification
- spaetzleesser 5y ago“Almost like the deeper you go, the more likely the thing you're guesstimating will be a fantasy.” Like with every other method you need to know when to stop.
- jancsika 5y agoSeems like people stop. Just rank speculation that the last level they go to before they did was probably not a great choice for a branch.
- jodrellblank 5y ago> "Of course nobody knows exactly how many piano tuners there are in New York, but you could guess about how many piano owners there are" You could guess how many piano tuners there are. Why is a guess at piano owners expected to be any more accurate? (I know that's in the blog, and original question, not just your comment).
- jancsika 5y agoBecause a meaningful guesstimate for tuners needs a workable sample size, and it would generally be too close to zero to tell if any exist. At the time Fermi lived a metric shitton of abodes housed a piano-- that's almost certainly why he used that example. You could just peruse a block of abodes to get a decent estimate (or simply think of one in your head). But in general there are fewer tuners than there are pianos, so even at the time a rough estimate for a city block could return zero. Even today, if I walk a city block I'll find six buildings that house a piano. But I'd probably need a 20-mile radius before one of two piano tuners come into range. Another question occurs to me-- when I peruse the pianos in the block, what is the chance I'll actually see one of the tuners doing the tuning? Smart tuners leave their card inside the piano with a list of dates of tuning-- if I have a chance I'll sneak into one of the houses of worship and see what the frequency is. I'll bet it's more likely I'll spot some deer meandering on the way.