Welcome to Learning to Estimate

A great deal of education at the collegiate level urges students not to estimate. Have theright answer or don’t bother to answer. Whoever had a math problem where one would get credit for an answer of “about 2.5”?

In the real world beyond the college classroom, however, the ability and proclivity to estimate are often essential. That alone makes learning to estimate an important skill. Does the state of the economy make a difference to the result in Presidential elections in the United States? The question does not seem to be a question of estimation. But if one answers “yes,” one is automatically estimating that there is some difference that state of the economy makes. 

Does the state of the economy make any difference in black voting in U.S. Presidential elections? (And is it a greater or lesser tendency than that of the general population?) For most of us, these are harder questions because we have not seen it estimated by various political pundits. But in 2020, it may be a much more important question than the more general question.

Notice that there really isn’t any exact answer possible for these questions. Thus, they are unlike a classroom math question. Any and every answer must be an estimate.

Estimation, then, is something like a graduate-level skill. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that graduate-level education in the United States gives particular attention to estimation skills (other than in Statistics, but even there, the tendency is strongly in favor of exact answers like p<.9647).

Other ideas on estimation to ponder:

Comparison and Contrast in Critical Thinking

What Is a Ballpark Estimate?

How to use ballpark estimate in a sentence.