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How Big Was The Round Table?

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Edited by Richard Walker, Wednesday, 18 Nov 2020, 01:22

Thinking about the Round Table Puzzle 

https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?post=232912

I wondered how many seats there are supposed to have been at the Round Table and whether communication (or even staying out of the rain) would have been feasible.

From the Wikipedia article Knights of the Round Table I got some useful information. Many have written about the Round Table, but among them the seating statistics can be summarised as follows

minimum 12
mode (commonest value); in the range 100-300, let’s say 200
maximum 1500+

What we want to know is the diameter of the table, and since this is only a back-of-an-envelope estimate we’ll say pi = 3. And ignoring social distancing it would be fair to assume each knight occupied 1 m of circumference.

My calculations

Minimum 12/3 = 4 m; big table, you’d need to shout; table easily fits indoors.
Mode 200/3 = 60+ m; loud hailers required; can be accommodated in a banqueting hall.
Maximum 1500/3 = 500 m (half a km!) ; telecoms required; only possible outside.

This post is a summarised preprint of a piece I plan to submit to Significance.
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