Quotes About Estimation

Most important part of doing physics is the knowledge of approximation.

And, of course, as savvy readers can appreciate, when software developers say it's going to take a year to get something done, they really mean two years. It's not because they're incompetent, or that they are calendar-challenged, it's just that estimating the time to do something we've never done before is something we suck at. And, by nature, we're often optimistic animals.

It is estimated that Consul Sugihara issued 6,000 Japanese transit visas. An estimated 40,000 descendants of his visa recipients, now known as "Sugihara Survivors," are alive because of his extraordinary courage. This was one of the largest rescues of Jews in the Holocaust.

The main points were: one, the amount of Israel's nuclear weapons, how many Israel had, that no one could predict or know, including the CIA. They were thinking about a number like 10 or 15. But I came out with a number between 150 to 200.

Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other's.

There are reasons, increasing in number and quality, to believe that the masses of ordinary galaxies may have been underestimated by a factor of 10 or more.

Assessing the energy value of foods is a difficult technical problem. Nutritionists cannot calculate the value of foods directly because foods are too complicated in their composition and structure, and digestive systems treat different foods in different ways. So instead of making precise calculations of exactly the number of calories people can obtain from a given food, nutritionists make rough guesses.

Jon said, "Two hundred kilograms is four hundred forty pounds. That much C-4 takes up about eight cubic feet, which is your basic cardboard box." Amy

The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete sceptics in religion.

Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other's.

Most people overestimate risk, failure and danger and underestimate the value of being curious.

Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance.

Alles hat immer nur den Wert, den wir ihm beimessen.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Consider one study that estimates a mom simultaneously and often single-handedly performs as many as seventeen occupations in the course of raising a child, from child-rearing, cooking, cleaning, chauffeuring, and financial planning to resolving family emotional problems (not to mention often doing part-time paid work in addition to it all). That particular study estimated a mother's worth at $508,700 a year, according to Ann Crittenden's The Price of Motherhood.

We estimated that we could make one of four cylinders with 4 inch bore and 4 inch stroke, weighing not over two hundred pounds, including all accessories.

An estimate is not a number. An estimate is a distribution.

We programmers simply do not know how long things will take. This isn't because we are incompetent or lazy; it's because there is simply no way to know how complicated a task is going to be until that task is engaged and finished. But, as we'll see, all is not lost.

If you are not holding back some energy in reserve, if you don't have a new plan, if you aren't going to change your behavior, and if you are reasonably confident in your original estimate, then promising to try is fundamentally dishonest. You are lying. And you are probably doing it to save face and to avoid a confrontation.

Premature Precision Both business and programmers are tempted to fall into the trap of premature precision. Business people want to know exactly what they are going to get before they authorize a project. Developers want to know exactly what they are supposed to deliver before they estimate the project. Both sides want a precision that simply cannot be achieved, and are often willing to waste a fortune trying to attain it.

Impatience is close to boredom but always results from one cause: an underestimation of the amount of time the job will take.

An approximate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem.

All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

If we would serve science, we must extend her limits, not only as far as our own knowledge is concerned, but in the estimation of others.