What Do You Know? What’s Your CEP?

Here is the accuracy and estimation game played by 208 guests at GPS World’s Leadership Dinner in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday evening, September 20. Take a gander at the rules that follow, and then try your skill at the nine questions.

To play fair, do not use Google or any other research, reference, or resource. Dinner guests were honor-bound not to employ their smartphones — just their smarts. You are, too.

The first six questions had known answers (at least to the gamesmasters) at the time of the dinner. The final three peered into the future, as of that evening. Two of them have since been determined. Once the Galileo question is settled, the What Do You Know Grand Winners — 10 individuals who sat and gamed together among the 21 competing tables — will be announced, and suitable tchotchkes distributed.

A special division for online contestants has been established; send your answers to editor@gpsworld.com. Any entries that are too suspiciously close to the true answers will be disqualified for use of unauthorized resources.

The accounting and awarding — and all the answers — will appear on the Wide Awake Blog in the very near future. Do not touch that dial.

Game Rules

1. What Do You Know? What’s Your CEP? consists of nine quantitative questions. Answer each question as best you can — without the aid of outside sources! Then give your error range: an upper bound and a lower bound.

Answers will be graded on how close they are to the true answer, the size of the error range given, and whether that error range encompasses the true answer. The smaller your error range, the higher your potential score — but if the true answer falls outside your error range, you score zero for that question.

2. The second and third rules pertained to “play by tables” at the dinner, and are irrelevant and thus omitted here.

4. A final trifecta of three questions asks you to predict events in the future.  After turning in your answers to these questions, game play concludes for the evening. A final Grand Prize to the winning table will be awarded after the last event.

A more detailed mathematical explanation of the scoring process is available at the scorer’s table, should you wish to see it.

And now, are you ready to play . . . .

What Do You Know??!!??!!  What’s Your CEP??!!??

1.  Estimate the distance in kilometers from Shanghai, China, to Nashville, Tennessee, along a Great Circle global route, and from that derive the number of Delta II booster rockets (used to launch GPS satellites) laid end-to-end that would cover that distance.

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _________ 

Lower bound  ______________

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2. Give the total area, in either square inches or square centimeters (specify which you are giving) of a rather substantial hat worn by Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, to a friend’s wedding in July of this year.

Kate Middleton

That hat!

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer __________ 

Lower bound  ______________

3.  Peg the number of total orbiting and operating GNSS satellites, including SBAS, as of September 20, 2012.

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________   

Lower bound  ______________

4.  Jack Daniel’s, a sour mash whiskey made in Lynchburg, Tennessee and the best-selling whiskey in the world, is known for its square bottles and black label. How many shots of whiskey does a white-oak barrel of Jack Daniel’s contain?

Jack Daniel’s barrel in the Hermitage Hotel, Nashville

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________   

Lower bound  ______________

5. How many of Richard Langley’s “Innovation” columns have appeared in GPS World magazine?

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________  

Lower bound  ______________

6.  In his memoirs, Tony Blair mentions that, when he first met Queen Elizabeth II as Prime Minister of the UK, the Queen put him in his place by telling him,  “You are my tenth prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born.”

In a similar vein, how many individuals have served as Prime Minister (official, not acting or deputy) of Japan from the beginning of the Shōwa era under Emperor Hirohito in 1926 until today? (Note:  This is the count of individual persons. A single person serving as Prime Minister several times, such as the postwar Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, counts only once.)

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________   

Lower bound  ______________

Final Trifecta

7.  Predict the number of days that will elapse between the day of the combined launch of the Galileo IOV-3 and IOV-4 satellites and the day when the first satellite of that pair is declared operational. Dates are defined based on UTC. For example, if the launch should take place on the currently scheduled date of October 10, then October 11 would be 1 day, October 31 would be 21 days, and so on.  If the launch occurs on a different date, we start counting from there.

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________

Lower bound  ______________

8. Predict the number of U.S. states, out of 50, that go blue in the Presidential election on November 6, 2012 — that is, their electoral votes go to President Obama’s Democratic Party ticket.

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________

Lower bound  ______________

9.  Predict the total number of combined points scored in all three NFL football games to be played on Thanksgiving, November 22: Houston Texans vs. Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys vs. Washington Redskins, New England Patriots vs. New York Jets.

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________

Lower bound  ______________

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Sleep was what I wanted, you know what I got. Wide Awake, staying up late, wishing I was not.