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I mistakenly sent my reply only to Dan.  The rest of the list might be
interested in the stats as well.  I don't know the current membership of US
Power Squadron, but their distribution of JN and N grads should be similar,
given that London Power and Sail Squadron is the largest in Canada, and
CPS and UPS courses and student interests are very similar

Another good source would be the Canadian Yachting Association and its
US, British and European equivalents.

JJK, SN


------- Forwarded message follows -------
From:                   John Kabel 
To:                     danallen46@attbi.com
Subject:                Re: Thought Experiment
Send reply to:          jjkabel@rogers.com
Date sent:              Wed, 12 Jun 2002 16:03:58 -0500

Dan Allen:

As to your guess on sextant users:

The London Power and Sail Squadron has 900 members, and until recently
had 38 people who had passed one course in celestial navigation (Junior
Navigator), plus 21 people who had passed two courses in celestial
(Navigator) from Canadian Power and Sail Squadrons.  We currently have
4 students taking the recently revised CN course.

CPs has about 39,000 members. And Canada has about 36 million people.
And I think Canada has more boaters per capita than the US.

Now it is difficult to say how many of the LPS grads are still active
users of sextants.  I know that I am, along with the current CN
instructor and his students.  A few of the celestial grads have stopped
boating altogether.

But, these numbers should be indicative.  I hope they help you with
your guess.

S/C John Kabel, SN
Past Commander, now GPS  and  Weather Instructor, among other things!
London Power and Sail Squadron



> I propose a thought experiment with a couple of "back of the envelope"
> estimation questions:
>
> 1) How many sextant users are there in the world?
> 2) What percentage of the world's population that are
>    interested in sextants are on this mailing list?
>
> I of course do not know the answers to these questions, but I think
> we can make some reasonable assumptions to be able to come up with
> ballpark figures.
>
> If you decide to give this informal competition a try, please try and
> give us some of your reasoning behind your estimates, because that is
> the real interesting part of such a question!
>
> Dan Allen


------- End of forwarded message -------

   

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