What's the best strategy to count the eggs in the jar?

Question

It's Easter time, and in my workplace we have a "Count the eggs in the jar!" kind of game.

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What would be the best mathematical strategy to get as close as possible to the correct count?

Update: The contest has ended, the number of eggs is (Hover over the box below)

154

a) Open the jar and count - b) weigh (requires an empty jar and identical egg to compare) - c) find out what others guess and make a guess in the largest gap in the reasonable range (if you don't know what others guess, assume they guess round numbers) — Hagen von Eitzen, Apr 16 '14 at 09:59
@Amr In all fairness, I have no clue what estimation theory is. It had "estimation" in it, so I thought it's relevant. — Adi, Apr 16 '14 at 10:02
If the jar were near my desk, the number would at least be (almost strictly) decreasing :) — Hagen von Eitzen, Apr 16 '14 at 10:22
@Jakob I ended up making calculations and estimations based on the photo and size of each egg. I ended up with 149. I answered 153 — Adi, Apr 17 '14 at 06:15

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 17 '14 at 05:17

3

Find out what everyone else guessed and average their guesses.

answered Apr 17 '14 at 05:17

Qiaochu Yuan

419,620

This is a genius idea. – user85798 Apr 17 '14 at 05:23

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 23 '14 at 12:55

I made some calculations, here's the draft from my notepad

Egg: 3cm x 2.3cm (8.3ml)
Jar: (pi*8.5cm^2) x 10cm (2269ml)
Filled volume: 1868.5ml (estimate)
Normalized to the packing efficiency (66.5%) : 1242.5ml

1242.5/8.3 = 149.7 eggs

I wasn't off by much.

What's the best strategy to count the eggs in the jar?

2 Answers2