Estimation question

Estimate the number of passengers arriving in SF airport every day.

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 using known annual airport traffic figures and flight and passenger math.

Estimate the airport's total annual passenger traffic, for example around 50 million passengers a year, both arrivals and departures.
Assume roughly half of total traffic represents arrivals, since each trip includes one arrival and one departure somewhere.
Divide the annual arrivals figure by 365 days to get an average daily arrivals number.
Adjust for known seasonality, since summer travel is heavier than winter, and state the daily figure as a range.
Sanity check against known daily flight volume, using an average plane size to cross check.

Anchors on a real, known reference point, the airport's roughly 50 million annual passengers, rather than estimating from scratch.
Shows the math clearly, 50 million divided by two for arrivals only, divided by 365 days gives roughly 68,000 daily arriving passengers.
Cross checks with a second method, daily flight count times average passengers per flight, to validate the estimate.

Not distinguishing arrivals from total passenger traffic, which includes departures.
Giving a single number with no cross check method.
Ignoring seasonality when the question could reasonably ask for a typical or peak day.

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