Ignite presentation by Andrew Walkingshaw (@covert) of Timetric (http://timetric.com/, @timetric) at Ignite! NewsFoo

1. Andrew Walkingshaw
@covert, @timetric
http://timetric.com/
The back of an envelope.

2. Enrico Fermi (1901-1954)

3. Trinity Test: July 16, 1945

4. 10
One.
1
10
100
Orders of magnitude

6. Three rules:
1. State your assumptions
2. Justify your guesses
3. Be “dimensionally consistent”

7. Population of Chicago: ~5,000,000
Households: 5,000,000 / 2 people ≈ 2,500,000
Pianos: 5% of households ≈ 125,000 pianos
Assume: each piano tuned once a year, taking
~2 hours: => ~250,000 piano-tuning hours
=> 250,000/8 hours per tuning day ≈ 30,000 days
200 working days a year => around 150 tuners

8. And, actually:
290 “musical instrument repairers and tuners” –
(source: Bureau of Labour Statistics, 2009)

9. Sanity check.

10. How big is the US newspaper
industry?
value ≈ number of papers sold x
revenue per paper
npapers * $/paper = $total

11. Readers:
(number of potential readers x
papers per reader)
Revenue:
net price + ad sales per copy

12. How many papers are sold a year?
225m people (aged 20-80)
so around ~100m households
maybe 25% buy a paper?
=> 25m daily circulation
~400 days a year, so 10bn a year

13. How much revenue per copy?
Sales revenue: ~$0, more or less
Revenue from ads ≈
revenue per ad x number of ads
≈ 2¢ x 100
≈ $2 per copy

14. So total US newspaper industry:
≈ 10bn papers x $2/paper
≈ $20bn per annum!

15. Actual number: $24.8bn print ad revenue
(2009: Newspaper Association of America)

16. Online:
200m working adults
200 working days per year
4 pages each
4 ads a page
$5 cpm per ad = 0.5¢ per view
=> 200m x 200 x 4 x 4 x 0.005
≈$3.2bn online ad revenue

17. Actual: $2.7bn (NAA, 2009)

18. (For comparison: Bloomberg LP do
~$7bn revenue per annum.)

19. When in doubt: check!

21. Thank you!
http://timetric.com
http://withpretext.com
andrew@timetric.com
@covert, @timetric