A ingenious approach to estimate colossal numbers - Michael Mitchell
May 18, 2026•6 min
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Episode description
View the full lesson here: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/michael-mitchell-a-clever-way-to-estimate-enormous-numbers
Have you ever tried to guess how many pieces of candy there are in a jar? Or tackled a mindbender like: "How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?" Physicist Enrico Fermi was very good at problems like these -- learn how he used the power of 10 to make amazingly fast estimations of big numbers.
Lesson by Michael Mitchell, animation by Mark Phillips.
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