Estimate how many windows are in New York

Since Bain is a consulting firm, this question seems to be used as a way to probe applicant's approach to engagement problems. First ask questions to clarify the goal. Is New York the city, the state, or another municipality that happens to also be called New York, such as New York, Texas. Are we talking about windows on a building, or will it also include car windows, store shelf windows, or maybe even MS Windows licenses. After the information is clarified, it's time to analyze. Estimating the population and estimate an average number of windows per person is one approach, but it may seem too general. Another approach can be divide and conquer. Estimate the number of residential houses, estimate the number of offices, and number of vehicles, etc, and multiply by an average number for each type of structure. Round the number to the nearest million or tenth of million to make it easy to remember for the client.

Should the answer include opportunities and operating systems?

Define "New York".

There is an N, e, w, a Y....nope, no windows

"call Microsoft"

I gather that this very important question has some significant meaning to you, and I feel you should hire me to get to work on the answer right away. I'm going to need some support staff for this, and a travel expenses budget, and a small but dedicatd team of window counters. Gosh, see how when you ask me a question of genuine importance, I get all fired up?

I don't do windows, sorry

10 windows per person?!?! I want to see what apartment you're living in!!

I would have said , "if you hire me, I'll get my team on that right away."

he said 10 windows per person total (including car, home etc). 10 makes good sense. However, i do believe you'll have to go deeper than that. i.e- calculate that, add businesses, shopping centres, cabs and passing cars etc.

Simple, all of them.

estimated

If you are going to estimate correctly, you need to come up with a range. A single point estimate is pretty much guaranteed to be wrong. No matter which approach you take (average building floors by average number of windows, people * number of windows, etc), at best you get a midpoint of a range. The question is how wide does the range need to be? At this point, with little information, you need a pretty wide estimate (in the million window + range).

Exactly why I was thinking of Corning as a great Private Equity deal! Let me explain...and let's take this one step further...let's start with the Eastern Seabord, and the number of windows that are really hurricane proof..now let's look at the advantages of Gorilla Glass, it's uses, and strategic opportunities...let's go bigger than New York!

Four, the answer is four.

new y " O " rk. only one window.

do i include window's on every1's computers monitor or laptop for this?? if so then 10 windows per person at instant will be less caz the question is not clear at all,

There are 271,925,321 windows. If there are more windows then it would have been made after the survey and if it is less, then it would have broken down.

Are you talking about glass pained windows? Do double pained windows count as two or only one. Should I include MS Windows? What about the number of windows the average person has open at any one time? Which version of MS Windows? Are we talking both server and desktop versions of Windows? I know the answers to all of these questions, but I need to know which ones you want included in the answer. Then (if you have some paper) write some numbers down, do some calculations and give them an answer of some big number that is based on the calculations you made. (This is a question where they are trying to see if you can think outside the box and come up with some sort of reasonable estimate. There is no right answer that can be acheived or verified.)

@Bill: you forget '2' the after the '4'

What size is your window dimensions ? Large commercial could equal 4 residential size windows. Do you consider single pane or double glass as still one window ? What about glass block windows, do they count ? Like Carl Segan used to say, billions and billions...

When I think about this question I would want to simplify the categories into Residence windows and Business windows (other types exist but this should cover a large majority of standard construction windows). Starting with residency, I'll assume ~15M New York population, with roughly 80% in apartments and 20% in homes. Of the apartments I'd go with an average occupancy of 2, and home of 3. Then thinking about how many windows are in typical rooms in each residency (bedroom, dining, kitchen etc.) I came up with 14 windows in homes and 5 in apartments. Multiplying the numbers correctly I came up with 30M apartment windows and 14M home windows. Then for business windows, I decided that an appropriate number would be 80% of population is working, 20% with their own office which has one window. The other people are in shared work spaces, which I will assume on average have half as many windows as people. When multiplying these correctly I got 7.2M business windows. Total I ended up at 51.2 M windows.

A’ight first step: estimate the number of city blocks in the area you are being asked. Manhattan is about 200x10. Next, according to the Times there are ~25 windows per block in NYC. Once you answer that, be prepared for “what about busses?!” 100k busses in nyc, 12 Windows each. “What about cars!?” 1/4 of NYC owns cars, that’s probably 4 million or so people, cars have 6 windows, math it out friends.

windows 8

only one microsoft windows

more than door............

1 window compulsory = no. of houses in NY

Seriously?! No.

42.

as many as the glasses..

People 50m=dwelling x 5 windows =250million

There are no windows for new york because it is a city not a house to provide windows

I personally don't have the answer but I will find out and get back to you. When do you need to have a response?

Not everyone in the city has a vehicle, so 10 per person can't be the basis of calculation.