"Order of Magnitude" questions

[John Mallinckrodt <ajmallinckro@CSUPOMONA.EDU>]

The "Order of Magnitude" question has become a fixture at our
meetings.  The way we handle it is to declare the winner to be the
person who provides the median answer.  (The winner gets first
pick of the door prizes.)  It turns out to be critical to use
something like the median rather than the mean for this purpose
for reasons that shall be left as an exercise for the reader. We
have also used the geometric mean which accomplishes most of the
needed correction, but I tend to think that the median is still
best.

One of the great things about annointing the median answer is that
all questions of interpretation can be left to the person
providing the answer. Part of the assignment is effectively to
make the most reasonable assumptions in the face of ambiguity.

John Mallinckrodt      mailto:ajm@csupomona.edu
Cal Poly Pomona          http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm

On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, brian whatcott wrote:

> Wish I could be there. The "Order of Magnitude Question" is specially
> tantalizing. I would be glad to hear some commentary on the topic.