Hello Case Dojo,
When we think of maple syrup, we think of Canada — the World’s #1 producer of maple products. We hope today’s question won’t leave you too hungry for something sweet. Good luck and have fun!
Reminders
Spell out your thinking process, state your assumptions, and evaluate your final answer. There are many valid approaches to each problem.
No calculators are allowed, so make the math easy for yourself.
Try to come to an answer within 3-4 minutes at the longest (here’s a timer).
Today’s Question
How much maple syrup is consumed in Canada each week in Liters?
Assume the population of Canada is 40M.
Our sample answer
How we broke things down
We want to calculate (how many people consume maple syrup in Canada) and multiply it by (how much maple syrup does an average person consume each week)
We can break down Canada's population into 3 categories — high consumption, low consumption, and no consumption. We suspect different demographics have differing amounts of maple syrup in their diets.
For each category, we'll guess at the amount of maple syrup one person consumes per week.
Assumptions we made
Population of Canada = 40M
12.5% of people consume large amounts of maple syrup and go through a 0.25L bottle of maple syrup in about 5 weeks. Hence we estimate 0.05L per person per week in this category.
12.5% of people do not consume maple syrup.
75% consume a small amount of maple syrup and go through a 0.25L bottle of maple syrup in about half a year (25 weeks), hence 0.01L per person per week.
Our evaluation
We arrived at 550K Liters of maple syrup per week. This could be an overestimate because there may be more than 12.5% who do not consume maple syrup as it's not a staple ingredient in many diets, and Canada has substantial cultural diversity.
Other potential approaches we like
Segment by consumption at home and in restaurants
Segment by types of cultural diets and estimate the amount of maple syrup used in each culture's diet
Actual answer
We had to do a little bit of math for this one. Canada produces 60M Liters of maple syrup each year, of which ~45M Liters are exported, which leave 15M Liters in Canada. Divide that by 50 weeks, and Canada approximately consumes 300K Liters of maple syrup per week.
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🤠Fun Fact
In 2012, $18 million worth of maple syrup was stolen in what is now known as the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist.
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