Father's Day Contest Winner

We have a winner! If you followed the blog for any length of time, you know I love quirky questions. This one is pretty quirky.  Carl writes, "How many beers did it cost me to give my kid flugelhorn lessons?"


Ah, the flugelhorn: bagpipe of brass instruments. I suspect Carl paid in more than just beer:

It's OK, Carl. Little Timmy has to get better sometime.

If flugelhorns are anything like pianos, then a single lesson likely costs somewhere between $10 and $50. Some kids take lessons for years, while others take one lesson and never go back. I'll assume that the average flugelhornist takes lessons once a week for a year at a cost of $20 per lesson. That gives a total cost of about $1000 for flugelhorn lessons. I'll assume Carl is a Dos Equis man.

At $7.99 for a six-pack, it would cost 750 beers to pay for Carl's kid's flugelhorn lessons.

Thanks for great question, Carl! You'll be receiving a free signed copy of Ballparking in the mail shortly.

Aaron Santos is a physicist and author of the books How Many Licks? Or How to Estimate Damn Near Anything and Ballparking: Practical Math for Impractical Sports Questions. Follow him on Twitter at @aarontsantos.