3QUESTION 3 OF 3
Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
16,000,000
baguettes
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
Start with France's population, about 68 million. A baguette goes stale by dinner, so how many people pick one up on any given day? Not everybody, but a lot. Call it 1 in 4.
- People in France
- 68,000,000
- Buy a baguette that day
- ≈ 1 in 4
- 68M ÷ 4
- ≈ 17,000,000
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- Baguettes baked in France each year
- ≈ 6,000,000,000
- Days in a year
- ÷ 365
- ≈
- 16,000,000
Reference cited by Fermi: Confédération Nationale de la Boulangerie-Pâtisserie Française
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.