Estimation question

Estimate the number of flags hoisted on 76th Republic Day of India.

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Estimation skill: breaking a vague national count into a structured, defensible calculation with clear assumptions.

State the scope: flags hoisted at official Republic Day events, not every flag owned by a household.
Break India into segments: government buildings, schools, and community events, since each hoists at least one flag.
Estimate counts per segment: roughly 250,000 schools, 600,000 villages with a panchayat office, plus government buildings and private institutions.
Assume most schools and government offices hoist exactly one flag, while larger campuses might hoist a few.
Sum the segments and round to an order of magnitude rather than a false-precision figure.
Sanity check against population and typical civic participation in a Republic Day context.

Breaks the population into clear buckets, schools, government offices, and village panchayats, instead of guessing one blended number.
States numeric assumptions plainly, for example roughly 1.5 million schools in India and most hoisting one flag.
Arrives at an order of magnitude, in the low millions of flags, and says so explicitly as an estimate.
Flags the biggest uncertainty, whether private homes and businesses should count, and states the choice to exclude them.

Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.