2QUESTION 2 OF 3
Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
61,130,000
people
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
Start with 8 billion people, half of them women. Now ask how common one name can really be. One in a hundred sounds about right for a name that is merely popular, but the most popular? Call it one in sixty.
- World population
- 8,000,000,000
- Half are women
- ÷ 2
- Share named Maria
- × 1/60
- ≈ result
- ≈ 67,000,000
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- People named Maria worldwide
- 61,134,526
- Of which Brazil alone (2022 census)
- 12,224,470
- ≈ result
- 61,130,000 (about 1 in 119 people)
Reference cited by Fermi: Forebears.io forename index
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.