Are there more petals (not leaves, not grass) or bricks in the world?What do you think?

Petals, by miles.

Fantastic - a Friday afternoon brain-teaser. These are thrown in to interviews purely to see how you react under pressure and how clearly you can think through things logically when you are put under strain. Can you come up with a good reasoned argument or are you thrown by the question?My take would be that not even 10% of the world's land mass has buildings on it, nature being the other 90% (petals 1 - 0 bricks). Petals are also far smaller so a given area of land would produce a far greater yield of petals than it could support bricks - at least until the world's buildings are mostly skyscrapers (petals 2 - 0 bricks).The only stumbling block for petals is that they are seasonal, so only certain parts of the world are flowering at any given time of year. But the lead built up by petals in points i) and ii) above would more than compensate for this.How's that? Have I secured my berth at the 2nd round?!Tony RestellTop-Consultant.com

Good answer off the cuff Tony, but shouldn't you incorporate an estimate of land mass lost to ocean/desert/tundra to reduce the non-brick element, and allow for deforestation etc?

And petals only occur on flowering plants - so depends on the time of the year...

what about lego bricks........

Or really crap mobile phones?

Toy Man's point raises a most interesting perspective on this (as does Qwerty, though TM was first).Cardinal sin #1 in any analysis: we have not defined our terms here, so what are we actually counting?The king of Sparta was once asked why his city had no walls (the only one of the time not to have any, yet simultaneously the most powerful). The king pointed at his army and replied: "There is my wall, and every man is a brick." (Hence the expression of a reliable person as a brick.)Anyway, given that there are probably three or four people around who truly merit this approbation, the petals would likely still win the count :)My point is, the concepts need to be clarified in order to make a reasoned analysis ...