Hear See Think

2^32

proofmathisbeautiful:

In a recent job interview, a friend of mine was asked to estimate 2^32 (without a calculator)! He got it right!

After he told me this…I tried…and got it wrong! :O

LOL! FAIL!

The trick is to note that 2^10 = 1,024 is very nearly 1,000.

So 2^32 = 2^30*2^2 = (2^10)^3*4 is approximately 1,000^3*4 = 4,000,000,000.

The real answer will be bigger than 4 billion.  Let’s see what Mathematica says:

2^32 = 4,294,967,296