Wednesday, November 16, 2011

13. How many bottles of beer are [consumed] in the city over the week?

I have two suggestions for calculating an estimate of beer bottles consumed in the week.

The first approach involves estimating the population of the city, then the percentage that includes beer drinkers whether at home or out in restaurants and sports arenas. I would have to consider the events in the city for the week in question. Was it St. Patrick's Day? Was there a playoff basketball game? Is it Super Bowl week? Is it July 4th? Is it simply the time of year when beer drinking spikes? Could a poll be conducted for an appropriate sample size and then applied to the population of men and women in the city?

The second approach involves calculating the number of bottles sold out of grocery stores, corner shops and gas stations. Then calculating the receipts for beers sold at restaurants and sports arenas. The retail store number would only yield the number of beer bottles sold. We would then have to figure out how many of the bottles purchased were consumed. The restaurant and sports arena numbers would be a pretty close estimate of what was consumed. What is sold at a restaurant and sports arena is generally consumed rather than the beer purchased for the home which might be for consumption in two weeks or the next holiday. For the beers purchased in stores, we could use some known statistic about the average number of beers that a man consumes in a week and the average number of beers that a woman consumes in a week.

Both approaches have their flaws though right now the second approach might yield a number closer to the real number of beers consumed.

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