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Estimationwarm-up
How many dentists are there in the US?
How to approach it
Go from demand: how many dental visits Americans make each year, and how many visits one dentist can handle.
How a strong answer opens
“I'll go from demand: how many dental visits Americans make a year, divided by how many visits one dentist can handle. I'll start from about 335 million people.”
Outline of a strong answer
Try answering out loud for a few minutes before you open this.
- State the population as a round 335 million
- Assume share of people who see a dentist and visits per year
- Total visits per year
- Visits per dentist per day x working days per year
- Divide to get the number of dentists
- Check: does it imply a sensible number of dentists per town?
Where this question usually goes wrong
Assuming everyone sees a dentist twice a year and forgetting that hygienists handle many cleanings, which inflates the number of dentists.
Learn the method
The approach in five steps in Module 3, Estimation.
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