How to Guess Paper Clips in a Jar

Learning how to make estimations is useful throughout your life. Making estimations can help determine how much food you need for a party, how many people are in a room or even how much time you need to accomplish a task. It can also be helpful to compare different size quantities because it can help you choose a particular size package or visualize the contents of a larger package. This method can help you estimate the approximate number of paper clips in a jar.

Estimating Paper Clips

• 1

  Lift up the jar and count the paper clips on the bottom. Look at the thickness of the paper clips so you can visualize the width of a layer of paper clip.

• 2

  Divide the jar into smaller sections visually. Look at the paper clips in the jar to help you estimate the number of layers. Take a separate box of paper clips and count them out until it looks like you have removed the number of paper clips that will fill up a section of the jar.

• 3

  Count the paper clips you took out of the box. Multiply them by the number of sections you visually divided the jar into.

• 4

  Count the paper clips in the jar and compare the number with your estimation.