~the numbers you keep looking up

Rules of Thumb

Mortgage payments, take-home pay, paint coverage, running pace, energy bills — and exactly how long to rest a steak, or how long a drink takes to get cold at the back of the freezer. The nuanced things you’d look up or find in a forum, all in one place. Free, in your browser.

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Today

Rule of the day · The Rulebook

Halving the effect quadruples the sample

Sample size scales with 1/effect². Detecting a 5% lift instead of a 10% one costs four times the traffic, not twice.

Open the full Rulebook Exact tool: A/B Test Sample Size Calculator
Chain reactions

One answer sets off the next

Fifteen chains through the real calculators - and every link opens the next tool with the numbers already in it.

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Every area and tool as one living map - drift, hover, open.

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Same verified physics as the full tools. Click a mini to feature it above - open the simulator for controls and scenarios.

Areas
9 tools

Environmental

The earth, the sky, and the clock - moist-air physics, solar geometry, and time across the globe.

Open Environmental
4 tools

Materials and Elements

The properties of the stuff itself — every element and what it is actually for, how a fluid behaves as it warms, and what really sets the strength of a concrete mix.

Open Materials and Elements
7 tools

Electrical

Circuits and magnetics - Ohm's law, power factor correction, transformer turns ratio, and wire sizing.

Open Electrical
7 tools

Control Systems

How things respond and how we steer them - feedback control and the limits of digital sampling.

Open Control Systems
10 tools

Mathematics

A scientific calculator that shows its own order of operations, trigonometry, a full 2D/3D geometry suite, and statistics with a genuinely random Galton board.

Open Mathematics
7 tools

Health

BMI on a full colour-coded chart, running/cycling/swimming pace, and calorie needs from a validated formula.

Open Health
Tools deepen over time. Existing areas get more polish, sources, and rules of thumb - not a rush of half-finished calculators.

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      About Rules of Thumb

      Is this actually free?

      Yes - every tool, no account, no paywall. There are no ads and no analytics running on this site today; see the privacy policy for exactly what that means and what would change first if that ever changes.

      How accurate are the calculators?

      Each one is built from a real, cited formula or dataset - a physics equation, an engineering standard, published statistics - not a guess. Every tool's footer names its source, and most are verified against the source's own worked examples before publishing. See Sources for the full list.

      Do you track me or store my data?

      No first-party cookies and no analytics. Calculator inputs stay in your browser. The optional Favourite star on a tool saves it for you locally and can add +1 to the public popular ranking - never the numbers you typed. See Privacy.

      Can I use this without an internet connection?

      Yes, after your first visit. The site is installable as an app on desktop and mobile, and previously visited tools keep working offline.

      Every result on this site is for reference only. Check them against other sources before relying on them for a real decision.