guessworkguess‧work /ˈɡeswɜːk $ -wɜːrk/ noun [uncountable] 
Examples
There’s a lot of guesswork in these calculations.
ExamplesEXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
Thesaurus- "How did you know where she'd gone?" "It was pure guesswork."
- At the beginning, the police investigation was largely based on guesswork.
- It's important to find out what consumers want to buy, rather than relying on guesswork.
- Many of Carey's price estimates are based on guesswork.
- Although Patriots capture headlines and boast of a massive underground movement, they are so amorphous that counting them is guesswork.
- But it was more than guesswork.
- But that could have been guesswork.
- Discipline yourself to minimize opinion, disregard hearsay and reject guesswork.
- It is all guesswork, but we can not help thinking about it, and I have thought a great deal about it.
- Our comprehension, however, based as it is on observation, intuition, and guesswork is always only partial.
- Our judgements depend upon complicated interconnected combinations of sense-data, reasoning, and guesswork.
- The docs' guesswork just goes to show how miraculously improbable human health really is.
Longman Language Activatoran attempt to guess something► guess
the method of trying to find the answer to something by guessing: an attempt to guess something: · This is only a guess, but I think Barbara might have gone to Jan's house.· I didn't really know the answer. It was just a lucky guess.make a guess: · I'm not sure why she left him, but I think I can make a guess.good guess spoken (=say this when someone's guess is almost correct): · "When was the house built - about 1600?" "That's a good guess - it was 1624."I'll give you two/three guesses spoken (=say this when you think the other person already knows the answer to the question): · "Who's her new boyfriend then?" "I'll give you three guesses!''an educated guess: · "Did Cindy tell you that she's sold the business?" "No, it was just an educated guess."
► estimate an opinion about the value, size, speed etc of something that is formed partly by calculating and partly by guessing: · According to some estimates, almost two thirds of the city has been destroyed by the earthquake.rough estimate (=an estimate that is not intended to be exact): · These are the figures, but they're only a rough estimate.at/as a rough estimate (=making a rough estimate): · At a rough estimate, staff are recycling less than a quarter of the paper we buy.a conservative estimate (=an estimate that is deliberately low): · We're predicting a 10% rise in oil prices -- and that's a conservative estimate.
► guesswork when you try to understand something or find the answer to something by guessing, because you do not have all the information you need: · It's important to find out what consumers want to buy, rather than relying on guesswork.· At the beginning, the police investigation was largely based on guesswork.it was pure/sheer guesswork spoken (=use this to say that you found out something by guessing): · "How did you know where she'd gone?" "It was pure guesswork."
► speculation when a lot of people, especially in newspapers and on television, try to guess what is happening or what will happen because they do not have much definite information: speculation about: · There has been a lot of speculation about the date of the next election.· The success of the book was heightened by media speculation about who the characters were in real life.speculation that: · A further defeat for the government led to increasing speculation that the Prime Minister would resign.amid speculation (that): · The investigation into the crash continued amid speculation that terrorists had destroyed the plane.wild speculation (=guesses that are not sensible): · the wild speculation that surrounded Princess Diana's deathpure speculation (= guesses that are not sensible based only on guessing, and not on informaion): · Any suggestion of an imminent crash in property prices is pure speculation.
► speculative an opinion, explanation etc that is speculative is based on guessing and not on facts: · Theories of the origin of life are partly speculative.highly speculative (=based almost completely on guessing and probably not correct): · Until further research has been done, any figures that I can give you are highly speculative.entirely/purely speculative (=based completely on guessing): · The papers were full of talk of Lucan's whereabouts, all of it entirely speculative.
► conjecture formal guesses that are based on information that is not complete: a matter for/of conjecture (=something that people can try to guess but cannot know): · It's a matter for conjecture who wrote the original text in the fifteenth century.pure conjecture (=based only on guessing, and not on facts): · The judge dismissed the evidence as pure conjecture.
There’s a lot of guesswork in these calculations.