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Cognitive Psychology: Attention · Decision making · Learning · Judgement · Memory · Motivation · Perception · Reasoning · Thinking - Cognitive processes Cognition - Outline Index
Guesstimate is a portmanteau of the words guess and estimate, first used by American statisticians in 1934[1] or 1935.[2] It is defined as an estimate made without adequate or complete information,[3] [4] or, more strongly, as an estimate arrived at by guesswork or conjecture.[2][5][6] Like the word estimate, guesstimate may be used as a verb or a noun (with the same change in pronunciation).
The word is sometimes classified as informal English.[5] It may be used in a pejorative sense or as an informal synonym for "estimate".[7][8]
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 golf balls would it take to circle the Earth at the equator ?
- Answer: about one billion (109).[9]
- How many total miles do all Americans drive in a year ?
- Answer: about two trillion (2x1012).[10]
- How much high-level nuclear waste does a 1 GW nuclear power plant produce in a year ?
- Answer: about sixty tons.[11]
See also
References
- ↑ guess Online Etymological Dictionary
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 guesstimate Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
- ↑ guesstimate Merriam-Webster On-line Dictionary
- ↑ guesstimate MSN Encarta Dictionary
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 guesstimate American Heritage Dictionary
- ↑ Compact Oxford English Dictionary guesstimate
- ↑ "Guesstimate with confidence using confidence intervals" from back cover of Statistics for Dummies
- ↑ Guesstimate; Grades 4-6 NTTI Lesson Plan
- ↑ Weinstein & Adam (2008) Problem 3.2
- ↑ Weinstein & Adam (2008) Problem 5.1
- ↑ Weinstein & Adam (2008) Problem 10.5
- Weinstein, Lawrence; Adam, John A. (2008). Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin, Princeton University Press.
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