![Shell game in Berlin](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Shell_game_in_Berlin.jpg)
A guess (or an act of guessing) is a swift conclusion drawn from data directly at hand, and held as probable or tentative, while the person making the guess (the guesser) admittedly lacks material for a greater degree of certainty. A guess is also an unstable answer, as it is "always putative, fallible, open to further revision and interpretation, and validated against the horizon of possible meanings by showing that one interpretation is more probable than another in light of what we already know". In many of its uses, "the meaning of guessing is assumed as implicitly understood",
[Mark Tschaepe, "Gradations of Guessing: Preliminary Sketches and Suggestions", in John R. Shook, ''Contemporary Pragmatism'' Volume 10, Number 2, (December 2013), p. 135-154.] and the term is therefore often used without being meticulously defined. Guessing may combine elements of
deduction,
induction
Induction, Inducible or Inductive may refer to:
Biology and medicine
* Labor induction (birth/pregnancy)
* Induction chemotherapy, in medicine
* Induced stem cells, stem cells derived from somatic, reproductive, pluripotent or other cell t ...
,
abduction, and the purely
random
In common usage, randomness is the apparent or actual lack of pattern or predictability in events. A random sequence of events, symbols or steps often has no :wikt:order, order and does not follow an intelligible pattern or combination. Ind ...
selection of one choice from a set of given options. Guessing may also involve the
intuition
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledge; unconscious cognition; ...
of the guesser, who may have a "
gut feeling
Feelings are Subjectivity, subjective self-contained phenomenal experiences. According to the ''APA Dictionary of Psychology'', a feeling is "a self-contained phenomenal experience"; and feelings are "subjective, evaluative, and independent of t ...
" about which answer is correct without necessarily being able to articulate a reason for having this feeling.
Gradations
![Adm](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Adm._Haney_flips_the_coin_at_the_Pro_Bowl.jpg)
Philosopher Mark Tschaepe, who has written extensively on the
scientific
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
and
epistemological role of guessing, has noted that there are often-overlooked "gradations" of guessing - that is, different kinds of guesses susceptible to different levels of confidence. Tschaepe defines guessing as "an initial, deliberate originary activity of imaginatively creating, selecting, or dismissing potential solutions to problems or answers to questions as a volitional response to those problems or questions when insufficient information is available to make merely a deduction and/or induction to the solution or answer". He objects to definitions that describe guessing as either forming a "random or insufficiently formed opinion", which Tschaepe deems too ambiguous to be helpful, or "to instantaneously happen upon an opinion without reasoning". Tschaepe notes that in the latter case, the guess might appear to occur without reasoning, when in fact a reasoning process may be occurring so quickly in the mind of the guesser that it does not register as a process.
This reflects the observation made centuries before by
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
, that "when I turn one way rather than another, it is often because of a series of tiny impressions of which I am not aware". Tschaepe quotes the description given by
William Whewell
William Whewell ( ; 24 May 17946 March 1866) was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In his time as a student there, he achieved dist ...
, who says that this process "goes on so rapidly that we cannot trace it in its successive steps".
William Whewell
William Whewell ( ; 24 May 17946 March 1866) was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In his time as a student there, he achieved dist ...
, ''The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences: Founded Upon Their History'', Volume 2 (1840), p. 206-207.
A guess that "is merely a hunch or is groundless... is arbitrary and of little consequence
epistemologically". A guess made with no factual basis for its correctness may be called a wild guess.
Jonathan Baron
Jonathan Baron is an American psychologist. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in the science of decision-making.
Life and career
Baron was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1944, and received a B.A. in psy ...
has said that "
e value of a wild guess is l/N + l/N - l/N = l/N", meaning that taking a true wild guess is no different than choosing an answer at random. Philosopher
David Stove
David Charles Stove (15 September 1927 – 2 June 1994) was an Australian philosopher.
Philosophy
His work in philosophy of science included criticisms of David Hume's Inductive scepticism. He offered a positive response to the problem of ...
described this process as follows:
In such an instance, there not only is no reason for favoring "heads" or "tails", but everyone knows this to be the case. Tschaepe also addresses the guess made in a coin flip, contending that it merely represents an extremely limited case of guessing a random number. Tschaepe examines such guesses at greater length with the instance of guessing a number between 1 and 100, for which Tschaepe notes that the guesser "has to look for clues that are specific to what or whom is ordering them to guess, as well as possible past scenarios that involved guessing numbers", and once these are exhausted, "there comes a point very early in the process wherein no other clue to an answer exists".
As an exemplary case of guessing that involves progressively more information from which to make a further guess, Tschaepe notes the game of
Twenty Questions, which he describes as "similar to guessing a number that the other person is thinking, but unlike guessing a number as a singular action... allows for combining abductive reasoning with deductive and inductive reasoning".
An apparently unreasoned guess that turns out to be correct may be called a happy guess,
or a lucky guess, and it has been argued that "a 'lucky guess' is a paradigm case of a belief that does not count as knowledge".
Jane Austen
Jane Austen (; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots of ...
, in ''
Emma'', has the titular character respond to a character calling a match that she made a "lucky guess" by saying that "a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it". As Tschaepe notes,
William Whewell
William Whewell ( ; 24 May 17946 March 1866) was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In his time as a student there, he achieved dist ...
stated that certain scientific discoveries "are not improperly described as happy Guesses; and that Guesses, in these as in other instances, imply various suppositions made, of which some one turns out to be the right one".
By contrast, a guess made using prior knowledge to eliminate clearly wrong possibilities may be called an informed guess or an educated guess. Uninformed guesses can be distinguished from the kind of informed guesses that lead to the development of a
scientific hypothesis
A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous obser ...
. Tschaepe notes: "This process of guessing is distinct from that of a coin toss or picking a number."
Daniel Wueste wrote: "When a decision must be made, the educated guess of the experts will be the best basis for a decision — an educated guess is better than an uneducated guess."
An
estimate
Estimation (or estimating) is the process of finding an estimate or approximation, which is a value that is usable for some purpose even if input data may be incomplete, uncertain, or unstable. The value is nonetheless usable because it is der ...
is one kind of educated guess, although often one that involves making a numerical determination, and using some knowledge of known or observable variables to determine the most likely number or range of numbers. Wild estimation is a matter of selecting one possible answer from a set with little or no reason. Another kind of guessing is
conjecture
In mathematics, a conjecture is a conclusion or a proposition that is proffered on a tentative basis without proof. Some conjectures, such as the Riemann hypothesis (still a conjecture) or Fermat's Last Theorem (a conjecture until proven in 19 ...
, particularly as used in
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
to refer to a
conclusion or
proposition
In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, " meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the no ...
which appears to be correct based on incomplete information, but for which no
proof has been found.
Uses
Tschaepe notes that "guessing has been indicated as an important part of scientific processes, especially with regard to hypothesis-generation".
Regarding scientific hypothesis-generation, Tschaepe has stated that guessing is the initial, creative process involved in abductive reasoning wherein new ideas are first suggested. Following the work of Charles S. Peirce, guessing is "a combination of musing and logical analysis."
People learn to guess at an early age, and there are many guessing games played by children. In practice, children may find themselves in situations where "guessing is the only strategy they have available to them".
[Harold L. Schoen, Marilyn Zweng, ''Estimation and Mental Computation: 1986 Yearbook' (1986), p. 75-76.] In order to cope with these situations, children develop "(1) the ability to recognize situations in which guessing is the only reasonable strategy even though it provides no more than a gross estimate; (2) the ability to recognize that different levels of accuracy are possible and acceptable in different situations".
Certain kinds of
exams
An examination (exam or evaluation) or test is an educational assessment intended to measure a test-taker's knowledge, skill, aptitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics (e.g., beliefs). A test may be administered verb ...
, particularly those that involve
multiple choice
Multiple choice (MC), objective response or MCQ (for multiple choice question) is a form of an objective assessment in which respondents are asked to select only correct answers from the choices offered as a list. The multiple choice format is mo ...
questions, attempt to penalize exam takers for guessing by giving a small negative score for each wrong answer, so that the average number of correct guesses will be offset by the combined penalty for the average number of incorrect guesses. In such a scenario, a guesser who can eliminate one or two wrong answers can gain overall by guessing from the remaining pool of answers.
Guessing has been asserted to be necessary in
literary theory
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, mo ...
, where "we have to guess the meaning of the text because the author's intention is beyond our reach". Because the reader can never put themselves in exactly the situation the author was in when the text was written, to construe the meaning of the text "is to make a guess".
Games
![Game of Charades - 05](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Game_of_Charades_-_05.jpg)
A guessing game is a
game
A game is a structured form of play (activity), play, usually undertaken for enjoyment, entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator s ...
in which the
object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ...
is to use guessing to discover some kind of information, such as a word, a phrase, a title, or the identity or location of an object.
[Vicki Cohen, John Cowen, ''Literacy for Children in an Information Age: Teaching Reading, Writing, and Thinking'' (2007), p. 267.] A guessing game has as its core a piece of information that one player knows, and the object is to coerce others into guessing that piece of information without actually divulging it in text or spoken word.
Charades
Charades (, ). is a parlor game, parlor or party game, party word game, word guessing game. Originally, the game was a dramatic form of literary charades: a single person would act out each syllable of a word or phrase in order, followed by the w ...
is probably the most well-known game of this type, and has spawned numerous commercial variants that involve differing rules on the type of communication to be given, such as ''
Catch Phrase
A catchphrase (alternatively spelled catch phrase) is a phrase or expression recognized by its repeated utterance. Such phrases often originate in popular culture and in the arts, and typically spread through word of mouth and a variety of mass ...
'', ''
Taboo
A taboo or tabu is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, sacred, or allowed only for certain persons.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...
'', ''
Pictionary
''Pictionary'' (, ) is a charades-inspired word-guessing game invented by Robert Angel with graphic design by Gary Everson and first published in 1985 by Angel Games Inc. Angel Games licensed Pictionary to Western Publishing. Hasbro purchase ...
'', and similar. The genre also includes many
game shows
A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment (radio, television, internet, stage or other) where contestants compete for a reward. These programs can either be participatory or demonstrative and are typically directed by a host, sh ...
such as ''
Win, Lose or Draw
''Win, Lose or Draw'' is an American television game show that aired from 1987 to 1990 in syndication and on NBC. It was taped at CBS Television City (one of the few non- CBS game shows to tape there), often in Studios 31, 33, and 43 at various ...
'', ''
Password
A password, sometimes called a passcode (for example in Apple devices), is secret data, typically a string of characters, usually used to confirm a user's identity. Traditionally, passwords were expected to be memorized, but the large number of ...
'' and ''
$25,000 Pyramid''.
Many of the games are played co-operatively. In some games some
player
Player may refer to:
Role or adjective
* Player (game), a participant in a game or sport
** Gamer, a player in video and tabletop games
** Athlete, a player in sports
** Player character, a character in a video game or role playing game who ...
(s) know the answer, but cannot tell the other(s), instead they must help them to guess it. Guessing games are "readily adaptable for
classroom use", as such a game "creates just enough tension to remain exciting, challenging, and competitive" for children, so long as the teacher designs effective rules "to eliminate unruly or unsportsmanship behavior".
Children in
therapy
A therapy or medical treatment (often abbreviated tx, Tx, or Tx) is the attempted remediation of a health problem, usually following a medical diagnosis.
As a rule, each therapy has indications and contraindications. There are many different ...
may initiate guessing games as a way to avoid talking about distressing issues, so some therapists prefer other kinds of games to facilitate communication.
Examples of guessing games include:
*
30 Seconds
*
Battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...
*
Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (, ), was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century, when he was rediscovered ...
*
Bulleribock
*
Charades
Charades (, ). is a parlor game, parlor or party game, party word game, word guessing game. Originally, the game was a dramatic form of literary charades: a single person would act out each syllable of a word or phrase in order, followed by the w ...
*
Hangman
*
I spy
I spy is a guessing game where one player (the ''spy'' or ''it'') chooses an object within sight and announces to the other players that "I spy with my little eye something beginning with...", naming the first letter of the object. Other players a ...
*
Mastermind
Mastermind, Master Mind or The Mastermind may refer to:
Fictional characters
* Mastermind (Jason Wyngarde), a fictional supervillain in Marvel Comics, a title also held by his daughters:
** Martinique Jason, the first daughter and successor of th ...
*
Name That Tune
''Name That Tune'' is an American television music game show. Originally created and produced by orchestra conductor Harry Salter and his wife Roberta Semple Salter, the series features contestants competing to correctly identify songs being p ...
*
Pictionary
''Pictionary'' (, ) is a charades-inspired word-guessing game invented by Robert Angel with graphic design by Gary Everson and first published in 1985 by Angel Games Inc. Angel Games licensed Pictionary to Western Publishing. Hasbro purchase ...
*
Protmušis The logo of Protmušis.
Protmušis (literally "Mindfight" in Lithuanian) is a team pub quiz-type game (where the teams play against each other) that takes place in Vilnius, Lithuania. The organisers and participants of Protmušis are mainly student ...
*
Taboo
A taboo or tabu is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, sacred, or allowed only for certain persons.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...
*
Time's Up!
Time's Up! Environmental Organization was founded in 1987 to help educate New Yorkers about environmental awareness. One of its main focuses is to promote non-polluting transportation, by advocating bicycling.
Time's Up! helped found New York C ...
*
Twenty questions
*
Ulam's game
Ulam's game, or the Rényi–Ulam game, is a mathematical game similar to the popular game of twenty questions. In Ulam's game, a player attempts to guess an unnamed object or number by asking yes–no questions of another, but ''one'' of the answ ...
*
Guess Who?
''Guess Who?'' is a two-player board game where players each guess the identity of the other's chosen character. The game was developed by Israeli game inventors Ora and Theo Coster, also known as Theora Design, and first manufactured by Milto ...
*
What's My Line?
''What's My Line?'' is a panel game show that originally ran in the United States on the CBS Television Network from 1950 to 1967, originally in black and white and later in color, with subsequent U.S. revivals. The game uses celebrity panelis ...
Software tests
In
software testing
Software testing is the act of examining the artifacts and the behavior of the software under test by validation and verification. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to apprecia ...
, error guessing is a
test method
A test method is a method for a test in science or engineering, such as a physical test, chemical test, or statistical test. It is a definitive procedure that produces a test result. In order to ensure accurate and relevant test results, a test m ...
in which
test case
In software engineering, a test case is a specification of the inputs, execution conditions, testing procedure, and expected results that define a single test to be executed to achieve a particular software testing objective, such as to exercise ...
s used to find
bugs in
program
Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to:
Business and management
* Program management, the process of managing several related projects
* Time management
* Program, a part of planning
Arts and entertainment Audio
* Progra ...
s are established based on
experience
Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
in prior testing.
[Bernard Homès, ''Fundamentals of Software Testing'' (2013), sec. 4.5.3.] The scope of test cases usually rely on the software tester involved, who uses past experience and
intuition
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledge; unconscious cognition; ...
to determine what situations commonly cause software failure, or may cause errors to appear.
[R.G. Evans, ''Supercomputational Science'' (2012), p. 39.] Typical errors include
divide by zero,
null pointers, or invalid
parameter
A parameter (), generally, is any characteristic that can help in defining or classifying a particular system (meaning an event, project, object, situation, etc.). That is, a parameter is an element of a system that is useful, or critical, when ...
s. Error guessing has no explicit rules for testing; test cases can be designed depending on the situation, either drawing from functional documents or when an unexpected/undocumented error is found while testing operations.
Social impact
A study of guessing in social situations (for example, guessing someone's test score or potential salary) determined that there are situations where it is beneficial to intentionally either overguess (guess a higher amount) or underguess (guess a lower amount).
[Luxi Shen, Christopher K. Hsee, Jiao Zhang]
The Art and Science of Guessing
, ''Emotion'' (2011), Vol. 11, No. 6, p. 1462–1468. The study noted that students who knew the score they had received on a test were happier when another person who did not know the score guessed a lower number; the lower guess gave the student the positive feeling of having exceeded expectations.
See also
*
Abductive reasoning
Abductive reasoning (also called abduction,For example: abductive inference, or retroduction) is a form of logical inference formulated and advanced by American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce beginning in the last third of the 19th century ...
*
Conjecture
In mathematics, a conjecture is a conclusion or a proposition that is proffered on a tentative basis without proof. Some conjectures, such as the Riemann hypothesis (still a conjecture) or Fermat's Last Theorem (a conjecture until proven in 19 ...
*
Error guessing
*
List of Buddha games
The Buddhist games list is a list of games that Gautama Buddha is reputed to have said that he would not play and that his disciples should likewise not play, because he believed them to be a 'cause for negligence'. This list dates from the 6th or ...
*
Syntax guessing
References
External links
{{Types of games
Mental processes
Epistemology
Guessing