How Many Cats Are There in the United States? | Management ...

Case Type: estimate/guesstimate.
Consulting Firm: Advisory Board Company first round job interview.
Industry Coverage: non-profit organization.

Case Interview Question #00270: How many cats are there in the United States?

Interview Tips:

This is a typical population based estimation/guesstimate case. Usually, this kind of cases have a simple format ?How many units of product X are consumed every year in country/region Y?, and can be solved by the following approach:

• Step 1: Start with the overall population in country/region Y.
• Step 2: Calculate number of potential users.
• Step 3: Categorize on basis of usage (High, Medium, Low).
• Step 4: Assign percentages to each category.
• Step 5: Use these percentages to calculate number of people in each category and from that calculate units of products consumed every year.

Possible Answer:

• Population of USA: 300 Million (approximately).
• Average size of family: 3 Members.
• No. of families in US: 100 Million.
• Assume 50% of families in US has at least one pet. Therefore, families with pets: 50 Million.
• Assume dogs and cats are the only pets US families have and that the distribution is 1:1. Therefore families with cats: 25 Million.
• Cat owners are peculiar. Many of them have more than one cat. So we come up with a distribution table:

Cats / Family	% of families	No. of families	No. of Cats
1	30	7.5 Million	7.5 Million
2	40	10 Million	20 Million
3	30	7.5 Million	22.5 Million
Total Number of Cats:			50 Million

But what about strays? Assume there is a stray for every 5 household pet cats. Then the number of strays: 10 Million.
Therefore, total Number of cats in the US: ~60 Million.

Reality Check: According to statistics compiled by the not-for-profit corporation American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), about 63% of all households in the United States have a pet (Source: American Veterinary Medical Association). About 75 million dogs and about 85 million cats are owned in the United States (Source: Pet Food Institute). It is impossible to determine how many stray dogs and cats live in the United States; estimates for cats alone range up to 70 million.

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