Crossword clues for guesstimate
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
guesstimate \guess"ti*mate\ n. [from guess and estimate] an estimate based on little information, being little better than a guess.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. (context informal English) An estimate that is hardly any better than a guess, often because it is based on insufficient or unreliable dat
v
1 (context intransitive English) To make a guesstimate. 2 (context transitive English) To make a guesstimate of a specific quantity.
WordNet
n. an estimate that combines reasoning with guessing [syn: guestimate]
v. estimate based on a calculation
Wikipedia
Guesstimate is an informal English portmanteau of guess and estimate, first used by American statisticians in 1934 or 1935. It is defined as an estimate made without using adequate or complete information, or, more strongly, as an estimate arrived at by guesswork or conjecture. Like the words estimate and guess, guesstimate may be used as a verb or a noun (with the same change in pronunciation as estimate). A guesstimate may be a first rough approximation pending a more accurate estimate, or it may be an educated guess at something for which no better information will become available.
The word may be used in a pejorative sense if information for a better estimate is available but ignored.
Guesstimation techniques are used:
- in physics, where the use of guesstimation techniques to solve Fermi problems is taught as a useful skill to science students.
- in cosmology, where the Drake equation is a well-known guesstimation method.
- in economics, where economic forecasts and statistics are often based on guesstimates.
- in software engineering, where new development of features and release timelines are based on effort guesstimates of tasks.
Lawrence Weinstein and John Adam's book Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin, based on the course "Physics on the Back of an Envelope" at Old Dominion University, promotes guesstimation techniques as a useful life skill. It includes many worked examples of guesstimation, including the following problems:
- How many total miles do Americans drive in a year?
- How much high-level nuclear waste does a 1 GW nuclear power plant produce in a year?
Usage examples of "guesstimate".
At a quick guesstimate, Ryan thought that the baron was several inches over seven feet tall.
If the stones had not scrambled her compass irreversibly, she might be able to guesstimate her position.
The tally was remarkably close to the guesstimate Ortega had made on his map during the debates.
They stood silently for a moment, watching the network diagnostics: the position guesstimate on one crumb was twenty-five to thirty feet further down.
CAPTAIN DEACON PROVED to have been correct in his guesstimate of their position.
She guesstimated the distance again, then toed the body armor to examine the blast pattern.
It was a history, dating from when I was not sure, but guesstimated some time before the first millennium.
But given that, and assuming that everything else goes linearly, the best guesstimate I can make says we get hit with everything emerging from a solid angle of one two-hundredth of a steradian of Alpha C.
She guesstimated the distance again, then toed the body armor to examine the blast pattern.
Because they had no standoff weapons-both of their Kh-27 antiradar missiles worked, but they had to expend both of them early on the inbound run because so few sites had been taken down by the first Megafortress-they were forced to zigzag in between the threat computer's guesstimate of each site's lethal radius.
I couldn't be sure, but my best guesstimate was that Priscilla was going to lose the race by a hair's breadth.
Delphi attempts to deal with very distant futures by making systematic use of the "intuitive" guesstimates of large numbers of experts.
Blondie realized that the helmet CPU was making guesstimates based on its analysis of the echoes.
They made guesstimates about the likelihood of hostile action from groups that weren't yet ready to lay down their arms and end the starvation.
His attentive posture, his flattering nods urged waterfalls of opinion, reminiscence, recollection, theorizing, guesstimating, exposition, synopsis and explication, juiced the life stories out of strangers.