Help! Tbh I have no idea how to approach this question. How would you solve it??
Case: How many elephants are there?
3 answers
Our Goal: #elephants
- #elephant = (elephant to human ratio) * (total human population)
- = 1 truck per 10,000 person (assumption) * 7B people
- = 7,000,000,000/10,000 elephants in total
- =70,000 elephants
- Life-span of elephants is approximately 70 years (in a poaching free forest)
- #elephants / lifespan
- = 70,000/70y = 1000/y (this is the #elephants dying every year)
- looks reasonable
- If you estimate how many elephants are born every year
- say we have a positive trend in elephant birth due to WWF's effort
- Approximately 5% per year, so 5% of the total amount will increase
- = 1000*5% = 50
- 1050 elephants take birth every year.
- The answer would be: there are 70,000 elephants in the world today and about 1050 take birth every year
This answer is far off from the real number, which is around 700K. Would the answer above still be accepted on the basis of having a well thought out structure behind it? — Gustavo on Dec 10, 2017
Always segment. You maybe able to segment by Wild vs Zoo...or segment by Continents vs percentage each continent has Elephants etc
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