The Amazing Narid

With apologies to The Amazing Randi....

I caused some mild astonishment among my coworkers today by nearly guessing the amount of pages in our proposal. You see, we have to number all pages with a numbering machine, so we know the total when we're done.

As the numbering began, I guessed a number, 5,587, and wrote it on the whiteboard. When it was over, the actual number was 5,567. A difference of well under 1%.

Of course I cheated.

Here's the simple explanation. We've numbered proposals before. Each 5" binder holds about 700 pages. The number varies according to how many dividers there are per binder (they take up more room than bond paper), and some will be more full than others. But the differences are small. So it's always around 700 pages. This proposal was contained in 8 binders, 8 times 700 is 5,600, substract or add a small random number, under 50, and you'll be close every time. I've done it before, once I came within 4 pages of the actual number.

The wonder this time is that I hit the same last digit, but the chances of that are only 1 in 10.

Is it dangerous to take proposition bets from Nareed? Methinks maybe so.

Narid has various spellings?

Quote: odiousgambit

Is it dangerous to take proposition bets from Nareed? Methinks maybe so.

You flatter me, sir.

Quote:

Narid has various spellings?

It's a play on the spelling sued by The Amazing Randi, a magician who's dedicated his life to exposing psychics and other frauds . Since I performed a fraud and exposed it myself, and pretended to have performed and amazing feat, I thought it appropriate.

BTW, I also exposed the perils of posting while dead tired. I said I substract or add a number under 50, when I should have said a number under 100.

We're putting another proposal together. This time I'll post my prediction long before we start numbering. I'll try to get people to bet on whether the actual number will be higher or lower.

For some reason, though, my coworkers don't like to bet against me...

Well, that was a bust.

I "guessed" 3,752 pages for the latest proposal and made a show of writing the number on the white board hours before numbering began. The actual number was 3,186. Bummer.

I wish I could say I did it on purpose, but the fact is I'm stumped as to what happened.

Looks to me as if they went with 600 pages per binder instead of 700. If you had used 600 as your estimate, what would your total have been?

Quote: MathExtremist

Looks to me as if they went with 600 pages per binder instead of 700. If you had used 600 as your estimate, what would your total have been?

About 3,300 +/- 100

But that would be odd. Typically we stuff the binders well past their maximum capacity (which does show it isn't maximum, yes?) I think I missestimated the number of binders, or they threw out a bunch of papaers that weren't necessary.