Gissning

Gissning is a noun in Swedish referring to the act of guessing or estimating something when information is incomplete or uncertain. It is formed from the verb gissa (to guess) with the nominalising suffix -ning. A gissning can be a rough assessment, a hunch, or an educated guess.

In everyday language, gissningar are informal and subjective. They contrast with more formal forms such as uppskattning (estimation), beräkning (calculation), or in statistics, estimat (estimate) or parameter estimates. The phrase en ren gissning signals a guess without substantial basis, while en välgrundad gissning can indicate a guess supported by partial information or experience.

Gissning appears in a variety of contexts, including games, sports predictions, quizzes, and decision-making under uncertainty. In educational settings, students may be asked to gissa a number or solution when data is incomplete, before applying methods to check or refine the answer. The word also appears in idioms, such as gissningsvis, meaning roughly or probably, used to express an approximate assessment.

Limitations accompany any gissning: it carries uncertainty and potential bias, and results depend on the forecaster’s knowledge and assumptions. When accuracy matters, gissningar are typically supplemented by data collection, formal analysis, or expertbedömning to move toward an uppskattning or estimate.