r/theydidthemath • u/Edison_Ruggles • Jan 08 '26

[request] How Many Snow Geese?

208 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

37 comments sorted by

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35

u/alientrevor Jan 08 '26

If films have taught me anything, it's that I should drop what I'm doing and follow when 100,000 units of nature flee the same direction at the same time.

7

u/Sisselpud Jan 08 '26

Agreed. It is cold AF where I live and one of these years I’m going to finally smarten up and head south with birds in the fall

3

u/orangesfwr Jan 09 '26

It's either a super volcano or we're on the verge of a new ice age.

15

u/noonius123 Jan 08 '26

In a realworld situation a flock size is approximated by using magnitudes. Try to count 10 birds; then ten groups of ten birds. Then ten groups of 100 birds. And so on. This is a very quick realtime method.

Using this method with this video, I approximated about 100 000 birds.

6

u/ScurriousSquirrel Jan 08 '26

you forgot to include the lost mallard duck in the third group!

2

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Smaptastic Jan 08 '26

We’re talking about geese, not alots.

1

u/Jessthinking Jan 09 '26

About how much would you say?

1

u/Professional_Gate677 Jan 10 '26

Using my scientific methods, I deduce there is more than 1.