estimations with numbers?!

[cacian]

How would one calculate timing with numbers?

For example and this is an exageration of what I mean:


If say someone wants to buy by a thousand/1000 of electronic gadgets, how long would take him or her to complete the task?

How does one go by estimating roughly timing with action?

Thank you for helping.

[YesNo]

If you had 1000 things to do and it took you 5 seconds to do one of those things, then the amount of time it would take you to complete the whole task would be

1000 * 5 seconds = 5000 seconds

I might be misunderstanding the question.

[cacian]

If you had 1000 things to do and it took you 5 seconds to do one of those things, then the amount of time it would take you to complete the whole task would be

1000 * 5 seconds = 5000 seconds

I might be misunderstanding the question.

Yes that is when it is exact and to the second and I would call that exageration because it does not take one second in real life.

what I mean is a situation such as this in real life
that would include
the time you spend looking
time you decide
time you get to buy it
time you get to pay..etc..
I am after a true to life estimate and should we able to estimate as close to reality as possible..

[RicMisc]

The actual time spent on a certain action differs every time and is even different for every individual. And even actions you do every day might take another amount of time each day. For example, I usually plan thirty minutes of traveling time for going to school by bicycle. However, this might take me five minutes longer or less depending on the mood I am in, the hurry I am in or just because something that's out of my power but I do have to deal with is different every day (like traffic lights).

My point is that I think it would be very hard or even impossible to make a true to life estimate on how long certain actions take us. This being said, you are usually able to make some estimate on how long certain things will take you. I hope I've interpreted your question correctly because I wasn't sure.

[cacian]

The actual time spent on a certain action differs every time and is even different for every individual. And even actions you do every day might take another amount of time each day. For example, I usually plan thirty minutes of traveling time for going to school by bicycle. However, this might take me five minutes longer or less depending on the mood I am in, the hurry I am in or just because something that's out of my power but I do have to deal with is different every day (like traffic lights).

My point is that I think it would be very hard or even impossible to make a true to life estimate on how long certain actions take us. This being said, you are usually able to make some estimate on how long certain things will take you. I hope I've interpreted your question correctly because I wasn't sure.

Hi RicMisc
Thank you for the post I think I was just wondering in general about putting a number to something and estimating its time, whether there was a true to life formula for it.
Another may be example is how long would it take for one person to read a100 books?
or
How long would it take two people to write a 10 worded sentence withing a suggested time frame?
In other word is there a way of framing a time slot according to an activity and is it easier to estimate it when only one person is involved or easier if they were more then one?
For example
How long would it take for 10 people to read 100 books
as oppose to one person?
so is it the bigger the number of people involved thequicker it is or the other way round?

[cacian]

the next question mght would we ever be able to estimate how fast can one learn?
If we gave something to someone to learn would we be able to average how far and how fast one has learned something?
In the same way how long does it take for a shuttle to travel from earth to space and back?

[cacian]

http://www.heritems.info/avatar2.jpgThe actual time spent on a certain action differs every time and is even different for every individual.

In other words two people taught the same subject would not learn at the same pace.
Is there any other way around it?

[RicMisc]

In other words two people taught the same subject would not learn at the same pace.
Is there any other way around it?

For example, if I have to learn a page of words in Latin that would take me about ten minutes. I know some people in my class that study for fifteen minutes on every page. And if I would ask my brother than it would take him even longer to learn the same amount of words.

There might of course be a way around these differences in speed. You would have to use two people that are able to learn at about the same speed.

But it remains very hard to make proper estimations since we are all human. And our capabilities to learn or do certain things are different for everyone, and our capabilities are even effected by little things like a state of mind, mood or a bad night's sleep.

If you would need to estimate time spent on something for for example a story you're writing then you should just go with something you think appropriate. It would have to be a really odd estimate to throw people off.