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Title: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by jack_the_ripper on Dec 24th, 2003, 2:24am can anyone tell me what will be a suitable answer for this? i am gonna give an interview in mircosoft and expecting more helps from all of u friends.. 8) |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by towr on Dec 24th, 2003, 3:35am I'd say, too many I'd estimate some 150 million, but if you want a more exact number I can google for it ;) (really, who cares about trivia, as long as you know where you can get the answer in reasonable time) |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Viperdude619 on Jan 11th, 2004, 5:24pm Here's how I would answer: "There are 143,781,202 cars in the USA, if you disagree then count them all so you're sure I'm wrong." |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Dqwez on Mar 12th, 2004, 2:14pm Say the US has 400mln approx people. 40% might own/drive cars. (That includes the Truck driving Bubbas down south). That gives you an approx figure of about 160mln. Thats a lot of cars. ::) |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Cathos on Mar 14th, 2004, 10:09pm There are no cars. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy explains this rather nicely: 1) Space is infinite 2) Only a finite number of planets are inhabited 3) Any finite number divided by infinity is so close to nothing as to make no difference, therefore the number of inhabited planets, and thus people, is zero, and anyone you meet along the way is just a figment of a deranged imagination Since there are no people in the universe, nobody is around to build cars, and even if they could, they would have nobody to market them to. So it seems the whole automobile industry is one of the worst bussiness decisions in the entire universe. :P |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by pedronunezmd on Jun 5th, 2004, 2:24pm Quote:
This is my first post in the microsoft section of the forum, but my assumption is that microsoft is more interested in how you arrive at an answer during the interview, rather than seeing if you know the "answer" to this type of "trivia" question? |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by manu sharma on Aug 22nd, 2004, 11:04am it is my first mail,and in this question interviewer is looking for the approach you used.i think they want to know how will you count the number of cars in USA? you can count the number of cars by counting the number of cars coming at petrol filling station for a number of days.because people used to take the petrol from nearby petrol filling station. ??? |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Patashu on Sep 11th, 2004, 4:30pm on 03/14/04 at 22:09:25, Cathos wrote:
And there are also no people to write up those paragraphs, or to post/quote them when neccesary. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Three Hands on Sep 12th, 2004, 6:06am However, given that a finite region of space has been determined (the USA), the total number of people and automobiles is not 0 at present (I believe). However, I would propose working out the position of each car in the USA (using a satellite image or similar), which would have the advantage of causing the traffic cops some problems, as they can't work out their speed :P Or, more seriously, look at statistics that have been compiled about the total number of cars in the USA, or just run an estimate on the number of households in the USA multiplied by the average number of cars per household in the USA (both would require information that I don't personally know, but suspect have been compiled by government surveys...) |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by John_Gaughan on Sep 13th, 2004, 6:36am on 09/12/04 at 06:06:14, Three Hands wrote:
I am a U.S. citizen and own two cars. Therefor the answer is not 0 :-) Anyway, I think it was FDR that promised a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. One answer would be "the number of cars is equal to the number of garages." |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Grimbal on Sep 13th, 2004, 3:26pm This is not a logical statement, unless it is stated that your 2 cars are in the United States. When Cathos says "there are no cars", it does not mean the number is mathematically 0, but just close to zero. And this is true, I guess, at the scale of the Universe. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by John_Gaughan on Sep 14th, 2004, 11:48am First you say my answer is not logical, which is true, then you talk about zero not being mathematical zero but "close enough." You are contradicting yourself ;D I own two cars, both of which are located in the United States. No, sorry, I jointly own one them with my wife. So do I really own 1.5 cars, from a logical standpoint? Anyway, from the standpoint of a single person sitting and talking with an interviewer, one is not expected to say "from the Universe's perspective, there are close to zero cars in the U.S." One is expected to give an answer from a human's perspective. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Grimbal on Sep 14th, 2004, 3:45pm on 09/14/04 at 11:48:53, John_Gaughan wrote:
I don't think I said that. But I agree, if you really want the job you better don't refer to the Hitchhiker's Guide. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by towr on Sep 15th, 2004, 1:27am If they don't appreciate literary references I wouldn't want to work there anyway :P |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Cathos on Sep 16th, 2004, 9:04pm Well, given an appropraite margin of error... Zero cars, plus or minus a billion... |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Icarus on Sep 17th, 2004, 7:28pm The answer depends on which job you are applying for. If you are an accountant, "how many do you want there to be?" might be a successful response. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by John_Gaughan on Sep 21st, 2004, 8:31am An accountant applying for a job at Enron? Anyway, you are correct, it depends on the job. Microsoft employs more than just programmers. Lawyers might give one nonsense response, accountants another, and PR/advertising people another. Programmers/computer scientists are probably the ones most likely to overanalyze, however. Just scroll up in this thread :-) |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Whymme on Oct 2nd, 2004, 11:56am on 03/14/04 at 22:09:25, Cathos wrote:
Well, yeah. Try this at your job interview, end the explanation with: "and thus there are no cars", and the interviewer will say: "According to that logic, there is no job. Goodbye." |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by freaks on Nov 6th, 2004, 2:34am Total number of cars in the USA = (Total number of cars manufactured in the USA + Total number of cars imported in the USA - Total number of cars exported from the USA) Subtract (Total number of cars that have been scrapped in the USA), if you want a more perfect answer. ::) Am I politiocally correct? ;D |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Sam on Nov 7th, 2004, 8:36pm Let Population = 250 million People per household = 3 Cars/household = 1 Avg life of car = 10 years Total cars = ((25 X 10^6) / 3) / 10 - 1 |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Grimbal on Nov 8th, 2004, 2:03am on 11/07/04 at 20:36:13, Sam wrote:
??? (25 X 10^6): don't you mean 25 x 10^7? /10 : that would mean you want the number of cars *bought every year*. -1 : did you just break your car? |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by coolnfundu on Nov 10th, 2004, 9:41pm well to approach the answer with any degree of surety I would definitely need more information ... but to start with I would go like this ... aprox population of USA is x ... and approx population of people ownig cars be say 20 percent or 30 percent ... (minus children, old people, so on) so there so I would go with .25x as number of people with cars and that should give me an approx number of so many cars ... To arrive at an exact answer needs further information and if I had an option to locate that information, I would rather call up car office and find the number out |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by the microsoft test taker on Dec 8th, 2004, 3:11am hi! jack_the_ripper ::) even i am to take the microsoft interview in the near future.Please mail me any questions you come across while your research for the questions and i'll do the same from my side.Also mail the questions that you faced while being interviewed by microsoft. Hope you have seen the questions available on the net for the microsoft test/interview. do take a look. reagrds, test taker |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Icarus on Dec 8th, 2004, 8:09am Good luck with your job interview, but you might notice that Jack posted this a year ago. And he has never posted again. I wouldn't count on his still being around. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by kane on Dec 9th, 2004, 9:02pm i agree with the above posts. the interviewer just wants to know how you think. the answer is not as important as your thought process. with that said, i have another approach to the problem. sampling: consider the space of VIN numbers. these are essentially IDs for each car, with a finite length and pattern. let the total number of different combinations of VIN's be T. randomly pick a set of VIN's. (this is very important. it must be random. you can't just look at the VIN's in your neighborhood, otherwise your sampling will be biased.) there's probably some Database of valid VIN's. figure out how many of your sample VIN's are valid VIN's (valid means there is a car associated with it and that it is in the U.S.) the percentage of valid VIN's to T is approximately equal the total number of cars in the U.S. how does that sound? |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Icarus on Dec 10th, 2004, 11:14am Since valid VINs are less than the total VINs, the percentage is less than 100. So, given the way you phrased that final line, you come up with less than 100 cars! (By "valid", I assume you mean they already have been assigned to some automobile.) I believe that what you meant was: take the ratio of valid VINs in your sample to the total size of the sample (not T). Multiply this ratio by T to estimate the total number of valid VINs. But, if you can find that database of valid VINs, why not simply count its entries? Then you would have the exact number of valid VINs. Also there is the question of just how closely the number of valid VINs matches the number of cars in the USA. Are VINs strictly for cars in the USA or are VINs an international means of identifying cars? If the latter is true, you are going to need to know what proportion of all cars are used in the USA. And if the former is true, then you need to know how many non-VIN cars are in the USA, and how many VIN cars are in other countries. Another problem with VINs: I, at least, interprete the question as refering only to cars that are still maintained. But a large number of vehicles have been scrapped since VINs were introduced. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by John_Gaughan on Dec 10th, 2004, 1:43pm Icarus, The digits in the VIN each stand for various things. The first digit is the country of origin, where the final assembly occured. The next few identify the manufacturer and model. Then there are a few that are defined by the manufacturer, such as a serial number to identify otherwise identical cars, the year, engine type, etc. Usually the manufacturer reserves a digit for the target country of sale. They may combine countries, for example, I think most treat the U.S. and Canada as the same (this is why we have MPH and KPH on our spedometers). British models would have the driver's seat on the right side of the vehicle. Japanese cars might have other modifications. This is encoded in the VIN, but I believe it varies by manufacturer. There are a few links that describe how to decode a VIN, but nothing I can get to through the firewall here at work. Try about.com or Wikipedia, I am sure one of them has more information. In the end, this is still not 100% accurate. VINs repeat eventually, just like Socialist Security Numbers, and some people take cars into other countries after the dealer sells them. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by The Trend Setter on Jan 14th, 2005, 10:41am There are 3. I counted them over the weekend. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Blazn Azn on Feb 8th, 2005, 5:53am theres 1 car in united states of AmeRiCa rearranging the letters |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by nevin on Mar 13th, 2005, 11:16am I would agree with the whole VIN approach, in one way or another, but I think you could get a pretty good count by a combination of methods (assuming you have ACCESS to the information) to find the number of cars in the USA: 1) get dmv records for registered cars (or whatever you want). This would be the total number of cars at that instant registered and _legal_ 2) get shipping -> dealer records for the cars directly from the manufacturers (eg, GM, Ford, etc). This would count the cars that have been produced that you would be looking for, but not registered yet. problem: "limbo" cars who have filed and are using their "temporary" registration certificate, unregistered (illegal) cars, exported/imported cars SO, I would think that: a) arrive at the above counts through #1 and #2, then come up with a reasonable number for the "limbo" cars. Since you cannot legally drive the car, don't consider it a car 'legally' ;) b) OR consider that a car is a car is a car - get records from all car manufactures of ALL of the cars produced EVER and a listing of custom's declarations of shipping contents (assuming accurate) and count them all up. Even if the car has been smashed, pulverized, melted down, and resulted in recycled furniture, it's still a car.... ack...there has got to be some way.... |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Car Manufacturer on Sep 4th, 2005, 11:33am The simple ans with generalized formulae can be: Total no of cars in USA = No of Cars Manufactured in USA till date - no of Cars exported + no of cars imported ;D |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by towr on Sep 4th, 2005, 1:40pm on 09/04/05 at 11:33:33, Car Manufacturer wrote:
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Mateo on Sep 19th, 2005, 4:29pm Anyway, does any one know what you call the number of cars a country has??? :-/ is it automobile park or automotor Park. any economist around? |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by cheapwhyskey on Oct 17th, 2005, 11:25pm roughly equal to the number of liscense plates in the us, which would be no greater the maxium "number" possible on a plate (this number varies state by state) * the number of states. which at the time of this post was still 50. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by EasyRiter on Oct 23rd, 2005, 2:31am I think it's important not to think in circles. If we have average number of cars per household, then someone actually calculated in one way or another the number of cars before. I think it's better to state how one would compute it: for example, we know how many barrels of oil are sold on the stock exchange each day and we know average gas expenditure. Weighing how many miles average car drives a day we can come up with a reasonable estimate. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by ozkar on Nov 13th, 2005, 10:30am The answers for these questions are never exact. It is the approach you take what is important. To answer this question, I would say. x = about 300 million people in USA y= about 5 people per family c =about 1.5 cars per family t =total cars t = (x/y) * c t - 90millions cars (using those numbers ;) |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by warden on Dec 14th, 2005, 3:35am many cars are not individually owned, but owned by dealers, rental car fleets, government, etc. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by wsj on Dec 15th, 2005, 1:38am This can be estimated as assuming population of US as 300 million and a family unit of say 3, as 100 million family units. Say 60% of the family units have cars. That gives us 60 million units. Of the rest 200 million people ( assuming that 1 car per person in a family being there already and the main bread earner would already be having/using the car) say again 30% owns a car, that gives us 60 million units. Now since business units also own cars. We have 5 million large and medium sized business. and 15 million very small business,self employed (US economic census). Assuming 10 vehicles per medium sized business and 1 per small one. Thats another 65 million business. So total comes around 185 million cars. Another way to go about it could be through personal income basis. Suggest if i am wrong. Regards |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by inderaj on Dec 28th, 2005, 2:31pm Well, we have no context, but if we assume a context like: 1) Making a product for cars - market size 2) Deciding what size VIN to use 3) Deciding how long plates will be if all had US plates instead of state ones. For all probable uses, 10-100 million might be good enough an estimate. You should be able to work with reasonable estimates. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by dshafranov on Jan 19th, 2006, 5:47pm Hi. I actually received this problem at Microsoft interview. While there are thousands of possible answers to this problem such as checking DMV records, examining VIN numbers, and etc, most of them are fairly unrealistic and will not be accepted (I know it for a fact because I tried). The interviewer will simply tell you that this information is unavailable and ask you to try a different approach. An "improved" answer would be to use the total number people in the US (known statistic) and divide it by average number of cars per person (unknown estimate) or to estimate the number of cars per town and to extrapolate the total across US, but these won't get by either. An "acceptable" solution involves using the total amount of petroleum imported into US, and then estimated the number of cars from that. Oh, and by the way, the interviewer will ask you to come up with an estimate, so be prepared to do some basic algebra. Some of the variations of the problem that I have heard include: * How many gas stations are there in the US? * How many manholes are there in the US? |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by rajeevrla on Mar 18th, 2006, 2:33pm COUNTABLY INFINITE .Since you can put all the cars in one-to-one correspondence with the Integers . This is a term in mathematics and is most widely used in computer science as well. Countably infinite is mainly used in Automata Theory.Since Alan Turing has done a really significant job in Theoretical Computer Science,right from giving us Turing machines and many more, he can no doubt be called as "Father of Computer Science ". As computer science student Microsoft expects some logical reasoning behind ur answer. Now after giving the answer as countably infinite you can co-relate the no. of cars in USA and it's one-to- one correspondence with the integers . Then u can explain something about Countably Infinite and it's use in Computer Science.In this way u can really impress the interviewer. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Icarus on Mar 18th, 2006, 5:06pm I don't see how the interviewer is going to be impressed by your inability to count! HOW in the world do you have a one-to-one correspondence between the obviously finite set of cars in the US and the infinite set of integers? |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by cwolves on Apr 8th, 2006, 9:05pm You're all assuming the question is asking: "How many working cars are in America?" It's not. There are 300 Million people (give or take) in the USA. Maybe 80 Million or so of these people are under 16 and can't drive. 220 Million left. Average it out to maybe one working car per .7 people left (70% own one car). 154 Million left. Assume an average age of maybe 45 years for everyone left and assume that a car last 15 years. This means that on average everyone is on their 3rd car: 462 Million cars, 154 Million of these working. Half of the "dead" ones have been destroyed, the others are either in junk yards or show cars, etc: 308 Million cars. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Grimbal on Apr 10th, 2006, 2:32pm I recently saw a documentary about biofuel in Brazil. It said they have 1 car for 4 people. Assuming a similar radio for the US would put the figure at 50 to 100 milion cars. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Icarus on Apr 10th, 2006, 4:19pm With all due respect to our Brazilian friends, the US has the highest per capita income of the world. Brazil has signficantly less. And the Brazilians do not have America's love affair with the automobile. I believe that the US has a significantly higher ratio of cars to people. Even if the cars have similar radios. ;) |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Grimbal on Apr 12th, 2006, 2:37pm Actually, I would gladly go up to 1 for 2, or maybe 2 for 3, but I have trouble imagining that it is 1 to 1, considering that part of the population is too young, not able to drive or can not afford a car. But well, I have never been there, so what do I know? |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Icarus on Apr 12th, 2006, 6:00pm 1:2 is probably too high. 2:3 certainly is. But 1:3 may be on the low side for the U.S. I know several people who have more cars than people in their households, even though that is the exception (as a matter of fact, right now I do, but only temporarily). |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by cwolves on Apr 14th, 2006, 8:34am 1:2 may be fairly close to the number of cars that your average person OWNS. This doesn't say how many cars are in the country though! You have to take into account the millions of cars sitting at car dealerships, junkyards, etc. The several thousand people that own hundreds of cars because they're collectors, cars in museums, etc. All told I wouldn't be surprise if there were more cars in the USA than there were people. The vast majority of this number probably coming from cars in junkyards. I still consider it to be a car until it is crushed into a little cube or stripped into thousands of pieces - most cars aren't. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Grimbal on Apr 15th, 2006, 8:36am on 04/14/06 at 08:34:58, cwolves wrote:
That brings the question of what is meant by "car". The important is not whether the answer is strictly speaking correct, but whether it is useful. If the figure is needed to compute the potential market for car insurances or GPSs, what is meant is probably cars that are functional and in service. I can't imagine why anybody would want to know how many cars inclusive wrecks there are in the US. It is probably something the interviewer wants to test, whether you make sure to understand what he means by "car", and not just assume that your own understandin of the word is what is asked, and that the interviewer should have been more specific if he meant somethin else. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by thepps on Sep 18th, 2006, 5:04am =>How many cars are there in the USA =>A lot =>Still A guess... =>If a car's number plate is like that BP 337 BZ then the total number is surely less than 264 X 103. Obviously much less than this number as all characters will not be allowed. Or you can get a list of all lisence numbers issued till now in states. I guess they maintain database. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by TheNumberScott on Oct 26th, 2006, 11:40am on 04/15/06 at 08:36:36, Grimbal wrote:
I agree. My son has about 30 matchbox cars. So the number could be huge. Also, I know a lot of people who own "trucks". |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Grimbal on Oct 31st, 2006, 2:01am Hm... if you have a database, just count the entries. By the way, if we don't hear of jack, that could mean he found a job. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by wahsplayer101 on Dec 13th, 2006, 10:35am Is it possible that the interviewer is just looking to see if you have decent common sense? Thats what most of these riddles are about, so shouldnt it be that as long as you provide an answer to all three parts of the riddle (cars, barber shop, etc.) that seems in porportion with the other two, it could be correct? If I said that there were 250,000,000 cars, and you assume you can have a male for each car, and that on average 500 males go to a single barber shop, that there are approx. 500,000 barbershops in america. Tell me if they are looking for something different. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Icarus on Dec 13th, 2006, 6:19pm ??? What does this have to do with barber shops? ??? |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Tenaliram on Nov 28th, 2007, 5:28am How can you count this yaar its just a foolosj Question??? :o |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by StallionMang on Jan 2nd, 2008, 6:28pm Please clarify what you mean by USA. It could be any of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_%28disambiguation%29 I will assume you mean the Uniform Securities Act, which is American legislation designed to guide each state in drafting their own state securities law. Therefore, the answer is 0. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by samlilith on Jan 8th, 2010, 1:46pm Every car has an associated license plate with it. So my guess would be the total number of cars in US is the total number of license plates assigned till now. |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by samlilith on Jan 8th, 2010, 1:49pm My second guess would be....just expand USA...it stands for "United States Of America"....Now the number of "cars" in this string is only 1....as there is only 1 "c" in the name... ;D |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by Grimbal on Jan 8th, 2010, 2:05pm http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+cars+in+the+USA returns 234.5 millions. It looks like a made-up number but I think it is more trustworthy than any guess I have seen so far. Note: they used to return 0, because Cars is a city in France, and it is not in the USA. They still do that for other countries. http://www86.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Number+of+cars+in+Canada |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by mbringas on Mar 7th, 2012, 12:03pm I 'm accord to this a) Only a finite number of planets are inhabited b) Space is infinite Regards __________________________ Mauricio |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by wade32 on Apr 16th, 2012, 8:10am According to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics for 2009 there are 254,212,610 registered passenger vehicles. Of these, 193,979,654 were classified as "Light duty vehicle, short wheel base, while another 40,488,025 were listed as "Light duty vehicle, long wheel base." Yet another 8,356,097 were classified as vehicles with 2 axles and 6 tires and 2,617,118 were classified as "Truck, combination." There were approximately 7,929,724 motorcycles in the US in 2009. Got this from Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States#Total_number_of_vehicles) |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by webtasarim on Oct 6th, 2013, 5:42pm nearly half of population has a car.wow thats too much :) |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by alien2 on Oct 9th, 2013, 6:05am Quote:
One? The Cars are an American rock band. (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xf0o9_drive-the-cars_music#.Uew8UI30Gt8) |
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Title: Re: How many cars are there in the USA? Post by anglia on Aug 11th, 2015, 5:53am There are hundred million cars in US. |
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