Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
120,000
products
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
Picture walking every aisle. A Supercenter has maybe 50 of them, each about 100 feet long with shelves on both sides. How many different products fit in one foot of shelf, counting every shelf from the floor up? Maybe 10.
- Aisles
- ~50
- Shelf per aisle, both sides
- × 200 ft
- Different products per foot, floor to top
- × 10
- 50 × 200 × 10
- ≈ 100,000
Picture walking every aisle. A Supercenter has maybe 50 of them, each about 30 meters long with shelves on both sides. How many different products fit in one meter of shelf, counting every shelf from the floor up? Maybe 30.
- Aisles
- ~50
- Shelf per aisle, both sides
- × 60 m
- Different products per meter, floor to top
- × 30
- 50 × 60 × 30
- ≈ 90,000
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- Items in a typical Walmart Supercenter (WSJ, 2015)
- ≈ 120,000
- Same figure (Bloomberg, 2017)
- ≈ 120,000
- ≈
- 120,000
Reference cited by Fermi: The Wall Street Journal (2015) and Bloomberg (2017): a typical Walmart Supercenter carries about 120,000 items
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