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> Like assuming the population of the USA was 1 Billion people.

Is that comically bad? It's only like three times too much (if you're using the American, 10^9 billion), but we'd accept a much greater margin of error in some other assumptions (like in the classic 'how many Piano tuners are in the city', I think an assumption of 1-in-30 or 1-in-300 households having a piano (that would need tuning) all sound like they could be true!)

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Totally my personal opinion, but not knowing the approximate population of the country you live in betrays a pretty serious lack of curiosity about the world. Obviously a judgement call on how far off is "far off", but it just gives a funny feeling, you know?

True, but in the context of making a ‘finger in the air’ calculation, 1 billion or 100 million (approximating to the nearest power of ten) should be “good enough’.

And if you’re interviewing, consider that for a decent proportion of people it may not be the country they live in (at least at the time you’re asking the question).

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