How Do You Estimate a Number Nobody Publishes, Responsibly?
Build the estimate from evidence you can point to, state plainly how strong that evidence is, and leave the reasoning open so a reader can push on it.
The most important number in this market is one that no authority officially publishes. That leaves an analyst with a choice, and most choose badly.
What Are the Two Easy but Wrong Ways to Handle a Missing Number?
The first is to skip the number entirely, and quietly hope no one notices the hole at the centre of the analysis. The second is worse: to borrow someone else's guess, strip off its caveats, and present it as established fact. Both are common. Both are how bad numbers get durable.
What Is the Honest Alternative for Estimating an Unpublished Number?
The responsible path is to build the estimate from evidence you can point to, state plainly how strong that evidence is, and leave the reasoning open so a reader can push on it. An estimate that carries its own confidence rating is a tool. A number pretending to a certainty it does not have is a trap.
That discipline, applied to the figures no one else will touch, is much of what the report is for.
Build the estimate from evidence you can point to, state plainly how strong that evidence is, and leave the reasoning open so a reader can push on it.
Skip it entirely and hope no one notices the hole in the analysis, or borrow someone else's guess, strip off its caveats, and present it as established fact.
An estimate that carries its own confidence rating is a tool. A number pretending to a certainty it does not have is a trap.
It is applied to the figures no one else will touch, which is much of what the report is for.
This post gives you the argument. The full method, the figures, and the confidence ratings behind them are in the report. Read a free sample chapter, then decide.
Read the free sample →