Fortunately, as an undergrad, I did have a chemistry professor who embodied Flynn’s ideal. On every exam, amid typical chemistry questions, was something like this: “How many piano tuners are there in New York City?” Students had to estimate, just by reasoning, and try to get the right order of magnitude. The professor later explained that these were “Fermi problems,” because Enrico Fermi—who created the first nuclear reactor beneath the University of Chicago football field—constantly made back-of-the-envelope estimates to help him approach problems.* The ultimate lesson of the question was
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