Challenge#8: Joyful Jellybeans

[ZebraRampage]

Originally Posted by manasecret

Well done, Happydude.

I wonder how you guys calculated your guesses. I started by taking that top-down photo and counting the beans one at a time in Photoshop, marking each bean with a dot after I counted it. I counted 298.

That was the easy part. The hard part was trying to figure out how many layers of 298 there were.

The problem with that is that the pile isn't the same height. The pile was the highest in the middle and kind of went sloping down the sides like a mountain. The way I did it was by using the can in the one picture. I measured the length of the can, and the height of the can where the highest jelly beans were. I then measured a real can, and I used the ratio to figure out the real height of where the jelly beans were. Then I measured the length of the bowl in the picture, and I had the height of the bowl in the picture, and my projected real height, so I was able to find the length. I then did the same thing for the width, but it took another picture to do that too. I then found the average volume of a jelly bean online. I calculated the volume of the bowl according to how much of it that the jelly beans occupied, based on what I saw..and then I took that over the avg volume of a jelly bean to find the amount. I got 726.8, but I lowered it to 715 because of the spaces inbetween the beans..but it wasn't as accurate as I hoped.

It kind of looks like Happydude just made a good guess, since his number is very simple. I mean, obviously Neo said that it is more common for people to underestimate the number, which happened, so Happydude probably guessed in the high 700s due to that. Then..he chose a fun number, 777. That's my assumption.

[manasecret]

Yeah, I was worried about the sloping problem at first. But you can just take the average of the height of the mound, somewhere in the middle between the apex and the sides. It wouldn't be exactly right, but I figured I didn't have to be exactly right because chances were no one would get really close -- I'd either be pretty close or way off. And I was right, if I had more time maybe I would have guessed three layers and would've won.

I meant to use the can as a height reference. But I got distracted playing a game and ran out of time..

[KillerGremlin]

I was upper thousands, haha, that was an eye estimate, looks like a lot more. I got two answers and just averaged them, kinda weird. It's a lot harder when you don't have a picture and it all has to be done with relative items.

[Typhoid]

I think I picked 630-something.

Or something.

Anyways, congrats, you bastard.

[Happydude]

thank you guys...at first i counted only 10 beans and saw how much room they took up, i then went to see how much room thoes 10 beans took up and counted the top layer of beans...then seeing the bowl's height figured that only 3-4 layers of beans could go there so i multiplied and got like 740 something but i just raised the number to lucky 7s


edit: oh and i'll have clue #7 please