The Estimation Game: a monthly Fermi estimation web app

post by Sage Future (aaron-ho-1), Adam B (adam-b) · 2023-02-20T11:33:04.736Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

Contents

  Info for organisers
  About Quantified Intuitions
None
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Announcing the first monthly Estimation Game:

• Answer 10 Fermi estimation questions [LW · GW], like “How many piano tuners are there in New York?”
• Train your estimation skills and get more comfortable putting numbers on things
• Team up with friends, or play solo
• See how your scores compare on the global leaderboard
• The game is around 10-40 minutes, depending on how much you want to discuss and reflect on your estimates

You can play The Estimation Game on Quantified Intuitions, solo, or with friends. The February game is live for one week (until Sunday 26th).

 

We’ll release a new Estimation Game each month. Lots of people tell us they’d like to get more practice doing BOTECs and estimating, but they don’t get around to it. So we’ve designed The Estimation Game to give you the impetus to do a bit of estimation each month in a fun context. 

You might use this as a sandbox to experiment with different methods of estimating. You could decompose the question into easier-to-estimate quantities - make estimates in your head, discuss with friends, use a bit of paper, or even build a scrappy Guesstimate [EA · GW] or Squiggle [EA · GW] model.

We’d appreciate your feedback in the comments, in our Discord, or at adam@sage-future.org. We’d love to have suggestions for questions for future rounds of The Estimation Game - this will help us keep the game varied and fun in future months!

 

Info for organisers

If you run a community group or meetup, we’ve designed the Estimation Game to be super easy to run as an off-the-shelf event. Check out our info for organisers page for resources and FAQs.

If you’re running a large-scale event and want to run a custom Estimation Game at it, let us know and we can help you set it up. We’re planning to pilot Estimation Games at EAGx Nordics (and maybe EAGx Cambridge).

 

About Quantified Intuitions

We built Quantified Intuitions as an epistemics training site. See our previous post for more on our motivation [EA · GW]. Alongside the monthly Estimation Game, we’ve made two permanent tools:

• Pastcasting: Predict past events to rapidly practise forecasting
• Calibration: Answer EA-themed trivia questions to calibrate your uncertainty
   

Thanks to our test groups in London, to community builders who gave feedback, in particular Robert Harling, Adash Herrenschmidt-Moller, and Sam Robinson, and to Chana Messinger at CEA for the idea and feedback throughout.

 

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