So Many Eggs

Today while running an errand at Wal-Mart, Allison and David and I saw an "Easter Bunny." He was waving and handing out eggs to the children. As we walked away (and you could see the man's arm through a gap in his costume between his glove and his sleeve), Allison said, "I think that's just a man dressed up like the Easter Bunny. I don't think it's the real Easter Bunny."

Later, they told Charlie and Sarah about it. We agreed that the real Easter Bunny wouldn't be sitting in a store today because he is probably very busy getting all the eggs ready for Easter.

Sarah: He probably has hundreds of eggs he has to get ready. Maybe even thousands!

Charlie: Thousands? Sarah, do you know how many people there are in the world? Six billion!

Charlie and I then proceeded to do the math to estimate how many eggs the Easter Bunny needs to prepare, making a few simplifying assumptions. We assumed that the average global life expectancy is 60 years old (I have no idea if this is a good average or not, but it seemed reasonable and made our math easier); that the population is evenly divided by age (again, we know this isn't true but it simplified our math); that the Easter Bunny brings eggs to children age 15 and under all around the world; and that he brings an average of 5 eggs per child. With those assumptions, Charlie calculated that the Easter Bunny needs to make 7.5 billion eggs!