| A consultant"s moment |
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| Wednesday, 02 July 2008 10:57 | |
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Everyday, my friend from HBS and I have lunch at a Sandwich place near our work place. The food is unbelievably fresh, healthy and incredibly yummy! We have a heavy lunch (as is the culture of Chile) and on our way back to office, we have honey-roasted-nuts for dessert ;) This stuff is apparently available in New York City too - and is sold by a Chilean! Yesterday, the two of us suddenly ventured into estimating how much the nut-vendor earned per day! We went around on a sound discussion (we have about 3 blocks to walk to reach office) and by the end of it, we had brought in standard deviation, the bell curve, estimated population of Santiago, estimated floating population in this touristy city, % of them in downtown, approximate "office hours" for the nut-vendor, number of packs he could make in an hour, number of packs people could consume in an hour, and perhaps many other parameters. The analysis fast and furious - for understandably no reason. Finally - we settled at an excessive estimate of a revenue of 150000 Chilean Pesos (approximately US$300) for the nut vendor per day. During our dessert time today, we got curious and asked him. His answer: 120000 Chilean Pesos (approximately US$240). Considering it was a blind estimate - not bad eh... |