There Are 5.77 Suckers Born Every Minute

In which we update Phineas Taylor Barnum for 2018

2018-12-26

According to Wikipedia, the phrase “There’s a sucker born every minute” first appeared in print in 1885. So:

1. Assume that the number of suckers born per minute is proportional to the number of people born per minute.
2. Assume that the number of people born per minute is proporational to the total population.
3. According to Wolfram | Alpha, the population of the USA in 1885 was 56.6 million people.
4. According to Wolfram | Alpha, the estimated population of the USA in 2018 is 327 million people.
5. Therefore, the number of suckers born per minute in 2018 must be 327/56.6, which Wolfram | Alpha gives as 5.77.

Reuse

Text and figures are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY-SA 4.0. The figures that have been reused from other sources don't fall under this license and can be recognized by a note in their caption: "Figure from ...".

Citation

Borasky (2018, Dec. 26). AlgoCompSynth by znmeb: There Are 5.77 Suckers Born Every Minute. Retrieved from https://www.algocompsynth.com/posts/suckers/
@misc{borasky2018there,
}