McEstimate: Any figure given by the Business and Economics editor of the Atlantic or an equally reliable source (Bill Kristol, Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, an anonymous tea party organizer, your dog, your neighbor’s toddler, your own personal peyote-induced vision that you had while vomiting tequila and bile through your nose onto yourself at sunrise at Burning Man) in which it is just generally acknowledged that the actual number most probably is either higher or lower by a factor of ten.
For example, I might state: “The last time I had my IQ checked, it was 1300, but that is just a McEstimate.”
See also:
Within an order of megantude—close enough to be published.
(via)
The Dangerman
Damn, any McEstimate of John Holmes’, um, attributes could be scary.
martha
I weigh 125 and am 5’10” tall.
That, my friends, is a McEstimate.
Love it! I’m so stealing this John…
AkaDad
My penis is 10 inches long and 3 inches wide, but that is just a McEstimate.
dmsilev
Very geeky insult, from my days in graduate school: “Their error bars are in the exponent”. Would seem to apply to McArdle’s sense of math.
I wonder whether she makes the same sort of “off by a factor of ten or more” errors in her house shopping or her cooking?
dms
WereBear
What about their endless “this is the End of everything!”
Is that a MacPocalypse?
SoVeryConfused
So, are you saying your actual IQ is either 130 or 13,000?
I am so very confused.
stevie314159
See also:
Within an order of megantude–close enough to be published.
khead
Tequila? I prefer the 3 gallons of moonshine I had last night. Of course, that’s just a McEstimate.
General Stuck
I’ve always thought MalkinMath to be superior in it’s inferior degree of accuracy. but watevah.
beltane
McEstimate is a nice, diplomatic term. I prefer McDumbass but that’s just me being mean.
MattF
When I was in grad school, a grad student in astrophysics in my neighborhood made a ‘back of the envelope’ estimate of the albedo of the interstellar medium. Which turned out to be wrong by an order of magnitude of orders of magnitude. He was rather proud of that.
Trinity
@beltane: This.
arguingwithsignposts
And all McEstimates are computed on McAlculators which do not do billions.
ETA: and given that penchant for such orders of magnitude errors, I can’t imagine what her food tastes like (as another commenter mentioned above).
David Hunt
While we’re talking about the Lexicon, I going to point out that Rosie needs an entry because somebody’s got to say it.
mai naem
Don’t forget Karl Rove’s math also. too.
p.a.
These errors are the result of attempts at basic arithmetic. Imagine her forays into McCalculus. Yet the McLantic is a very serious publication.
licensed to kill time
So, Dubya was actually misunderMcEstimated.
It’s all clear as mud now!
Steve
Late last night I was drafting a complaint in which I calculated my client’s damages as $24,000,000 instead of $480,000. Maybe I shouldn’t work late at night.
Stillwater
McGarbled: an argument or statement so completely vacuous you end up making no sense whatsoever.
MikeJ
@p.a.: I don’t think she’d try calculus. Why waste your time on something that’s all a plot?
Shinobi
Has McDonalds really served over a billion hamburgers or is that just a McEstimate?
The Dangerman
Tax cuts lead to increases in tax revenue, so it is a reasonable McEstimate that zero taxes should lead to infinite revenue (which, of course, would be a problem, because infinite revenue would lead to infinite Government spending and we sure in the fuck don’t want that – unless it would be for infinite wars, in which case, that’s cool).
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve: Use the $24 million in your demand letter.
suzanne
Related: McHypothetical.
During the first Bush administration, I called it “fuzzy math”.
Elizabelle
@stevie314159:
That’s wonderful.
NickM
In other words, you have to take everything Megan writes with about 4 metric tons of Pink Himalayan salt.
schrodinger's cat
Does McEstimate approach infinity as we near wingularity?
FlipYrWhig
@stevie314159: I really enjoyed “megantude.” Particularly how it blends “megan,” “magnitude,” and “attitude.”
Wile E. Quixote
President Obama is going to lunch at a restaurant that’s just catty corner from my office. I mcestimate that there are 4,000,000 people outside of my office down in Pioneer Square to see President Obama.
Jay in Oregon
@SoVeryConfused:
Yes.
Jay in Oregon
@stevie314159:
Beautiful!
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay in Oregon: Mine is either higher or lower than that.
BrianM
We will not rest until “an order of megantude” is added.
wrb
@BrianM:
Hear, Hear
jacy
@Wile E. Quixote:
I just hope your post doesn’t revive the catty-corner/caddy-corner argument. That could result in eleventy-billion word etymology posts. This of course is just a McEstimate.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
But the factor can be further off when the McEstimate is already taken into account.
Wile E. Quixote
I mcestimate that there will be roughly 100,000,000 posts by angry wingers about how President Obama ate lunch at Grand Central Bakery in Seattle where they have that faggy, artisanal bread and didn’t do what Real Murkins™ do when they eat lunch, which is get something from the McDonald’s drive through.
I also mcestimate that CNN and Faux will spend at least 100 hours covering President Obama’s choice of what to eat at lunch.
Spaghetti Lee
@Wile E. Quixote:
Well that’s too bad, because my McCalculator shows me that he has abused over 17,000 Constitutional freedoms.
El Cid
Monty Python has been there, done that.
Lee
For those of us megadorks out there, I just started up a #McEstimate hasttag on Twitter…
HumboldtBlue
Yeah, “an order of megnatude” has got to have its place in the lexicon or else the lexicon is just … nothing, nada, zilch.
Alwhite
@BrianM:
Got my vote too!
JGabriel
John Cole:
Personal experience, or just something you heard about? I mean, that’s some pretty hilariously specific detail.
.
MoeLarryAndJesus
I estimate that Peter Suderman has a 25 inch penis.
maus
@Wile E. Quixote: Sweet! I should have biked downtown this morning, but I forgot about all this until I got to work.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Pshaw! The fact that McArdle’s estimates are often off by an order of magnitude may be technically true, but it’s collectively nonsense.
.
Betsy
@stevie314159:
Brilliant.
cleek
@jacy:
it’s “kitty-corner”.
everything else is wrong.
see, no argument.
Anonymous At Work
Minor suggestion:
“…off by at least a factor of ten.”
Give yourself the wiggle room for next time the McEstimate is off by 20, rather than just 10.
Gabe
John, why do you insult my neighbor’s toddler? I asked him to tell me how old I was. First he said “two”. Then “22”. Then “102”. The correct answer is 33, but he was fairly close. Closer than McMoron would have been.
mai naem
The Tunchmeister’s McEstimated weight is 3 lbs.
El Tiburon
On this I laughed out loud.
wrb
Within an order of megantude—close enough to be publishedIn The Atlantic
The shame accruing to this once (and still mostly) great mag for endorsing her drivelings must be emphasized.
Anaboly
I also think “fee fees” needs to be added to the lexicon.
asiangrrlMN
@cleek: I was just going to say that. “Kitty-corner”. That is all.
@General Stuck: Woooo, I like that one, too. Maybe we can combine?
I McEstimate that my chances of being president in 2012 are around 10%, but that just may be my MalkinMath talking. Me likey!
Quiddity
John is being exceedingly McSnarky.
Adam Lang
Right up there with:
tancredible: (of a stated fact) completely unbelievable, except to two classes of people: those whose jobs depend upon their believing it, and those who will believe anything said by Glenn Beck or George W. Bush.
(of a person): can say anything, and have it be accepted by wingnuts and our media as gospel. As a direct result, never worries about whether anything he/she says is true or not.
tancredulous: Describing a person who would believe a tancredible person unreservedly and without critical thought.
Bill Murray
made up to buttress the conclusion decided before the piece was written