Reader poll: how many times have you worn a necktie?

This Fermi question is probably easy for some people:  I’m guessing there are some women for whom the answer is zero (am I right?), and some men whose necktie-wearing is dominated by “every day at work, 5 days a week, 50 days a year.”  For me it’s much harder.  I guess I’d say — three or four times a year, as an adult?  More when I was younger and went to more weddings.  I’m gonna estimate I’ve put on a tie 150 times in my life.

Followup question:  how many ties do you own?  I think I probably have about 8, but 5 are in the “will never wear again” category, and one of the 3 “sometimes wear” is the American flag tie I only wear on July 4.

Answer in comments!

Two estimation questions

It\’s apparently customary, when being interviewed for a job in the consulting industry, to be asked to estimate various numerical quantities:  how many cars are rented each week in the United States?  What proportion of the total mass of American citizens is made up of males?  I think that in asking these questions the interviewer is testing your ability to carry out rapid approximate quantitative reasoning, or, alternatively, to make confident assertions about whose truth you\’re almost completely ignorant — both important skills in that line of work.

Anyway, here are two questions.  I know the answer to the first one, and will reveal it tomorrow.  Put your unreasonably confident answers in comments!

1. What is the total number of living alumni (all degrees) of UW-Madison?
2. What is the population of the largest U.S. city without a Chinese restaurant?

Update: (24 Mar)  Commenter QXW is in the lead on question 2, observing that the city of Rye, NY (pop. 14,955) has no Chinese restaurants per Google Maps.  Can it really be true?