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Anonymous A
on May 01, 2022
Global
Question about

Tabular multiply by 24?

In the Tabular section is says: An alternative would be to move into an issue tree at this point meaning you only have to multiply by 24 once.

What are the 24 and where does it come from?

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Coach
on May 02, 2022
Bain consultant in private equity | Case interview mentor | Successfully mentored multiple acceptances at MBB & more

Dear Candidate,

The 24 refer to 24 hours in a day. This sentence, and the one that precedes it ("Some of the steps use the same figures for each group such as hours in a day and this makes the maths more time-consuming. An alternative would be to move into an issue tree at this point meaning you only have to multiply by 24 once."), refer to the fact that an issue tree allows you to do quicker maths than a table (where you would have to repeat the math for each row). An issue tree would allow you to sum up and multiply numbers at the end of the issue tree. 

Do not let the 24 confuse you - they do not seem to refer to the existing example of the issue tree or the table. Instead, the 24 is being used to illustrate that an issue tree can be mathematically simpler than a table. 

For example, if you had the question “how many patients enter US emergency rooms per year”, you could do the following steps in an issue tree:
1. Start with a segmentation by hospital type (e.g., small, medium, and large)
2. Come up with # of hospitals for each segment
3. Apply an hourly intake number per hospital segment (e.g., 1 patient/ hour for a small ER, 2 patients/ hour for a medium ER, and 3 patients/ hour for a large ER)
4. Instead of finding the annual number of ER patients for each hospital type individually (which you would have to do in a table), you can simply add the total patients/ hour across the hospital segments, and multiply that by 24 hours to get the daily number of ER patients, and then by 365 to get the annual number of ER patients. 

Hope this helps!

Ian
Coach
on May 02, 2022
Top US BCG / MBB Coach - 5,000 sessions |Tech, Platinion, Big 4 | 9/9 personal interviews passed | 95% candidate success

Hi there,

Ana is right, the 24 refers to hours in a day.

By the way, a math trick/shortcut would be to take a quarter (¼) of the number and add that to itself. Then, subtract out the original number (to move from 25 to 24).

Clara
Coach
on May 04, 2022
McKinsey | Awarded professor at Master in Management @ IE | MBA at MIT |+180 students coached | Integrated FIT Guide aut

Hello!

+1 Ian, super important insight there!

You will find that you need to multiply x24 in many cases, particularly when you are scaling up a number from a hourly basis calculation to a daily. 

Since it´s not an easy one, see that 25 is actually 100/4 (meaning 25%) - hence the trick of a quarter. 

Cheers, 

Clara

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