A Letter About Bidis

June 10, 2008 – 3:02 pm

So, I know I said no posts this week to save my eyes, but this is going to be a short one.

Reader Joel dropped me a note asking my opinion about his math on a Metafilter post about bidis. In it, he points out a page that makes some incredible claims about the worldwide production and consumption of an Indian cigarete called a bidi (or beedi, or beedie, or beedy, or biri).

He pointed out three facts that the herbal smoke shop stated:

• Indians smoke 1 trillion bidis a year.
• Worldwide consumption is at 700 trillion bidis a year.
• An experienced roller can roll 2,000 bidis a day.

From this he derived VERY rough equivalents of 2.7 bidis smoked per man, woman, and child in India per day, 100,000 bidis smoked per man, woman, and child per year around the world (which, to me, means that the Indians are WAAAY behind their daily quota and need to pick up some slack -- these bidis aren't going to smoke themselves), and 1.3 million workers churning out bidis just to meet the Indian national demand.

So here's my critique of your math, Joel... First, don't assume that every bidi is hand-rolled. There are many enterprising businessmen in India. I'm sure a few factories have automated the process and churn them out. So the estimate of 1.3 million rollers to meet demand is cool, but unrealistic.

Second, there are 1.15 billion people in India according to recent estimates, so it's more like 2.38 bidis per person per day. Seeing as the herbal smokeshop is selling them in packs of 25, a trillion a year is basically like 9.52% of the country having a pack-a-day habit. Totally realistic.

Now, when you get to the "700 trillion" bidis annual consumption worldwide, just estimating 100,000 a day per human on the planet was a good start, but you needed to go farther.

For example, if you took the smoke shop's price and worked with that: They're charging 1.8 British pounds per pack of 25. At $1.9545 U.S. dollars per British pound, that breaks down to roughly 14.07 cents per bidi. At that price, 700 trillion bidis would cost $98,490,000,000,000, or around 98.5 trillion dollars. That's 49.63% more than the gross domestic product of the whole freakin' world. I know tobacco's getting expensive, but give me a break.

Another fun game you could have played was with weight. Let's estimate each bidi weighs 1/10th of an ounce. At that weight, 700 trillion bidis would cumulatively weigh 2,187,500,000 tons. That's roughly equivalent to 22,551 fully loaded Nimitz class aircraft carriers. That's the planes, the armaments, the fuel, the food for 135,306,000 crew (6,000 per ship), that 135 million crew and their personal effects, and the ships themselves.

So, Joel, your math wasn't bad... a bit inexact, but that's what Rough Equivalents are all about. My only suggestion is that once you get the math started, take it places people don't expect it to go. Cheers.