3QUESTION 3 OF 3
Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
5,300,000,000
years
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
Wow that is going to be a very very long time. Ok so between chips, fries and pierogis, people eat maybe a potato every other day on average. That's 182 a year for each human. Good thing you can boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew.
- World population
- 8,000,000,000
- Potatoes each a year
- × 182
- Potatoes a year
- ≈ 1,460,000,000,000
- ÷ 365 a year, one person
- ≈ 4,000,000,000 years
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- FAOSTAT: world potato harvest, 2023
- ≈ 386.7 million tonnes
- In 200 g portions, one a day
- ≈ 1.93 trillion days
- ÷ 365 days
- ≈ 5,300,000,000 years
Reference cited by Fermi: FAOSTAT: 386.7 million tonnes of potatoes harvested worldwide in 2023
How close was your guess?
Your comparison will appear here.
Compare by ratio: divide the larger number by the smaller one. The closer to 1×, the better.