The White House also quietly increased its informal estimate of the surplus to around $40 billion, about twice what it had been projecting.

An informal estimate in 2003 gave the population as 4,000, approximately half the total Morgan County population.

There are no reliable estimates of the number of Falun Gong practitioners in China, although informal estimates have given figures as high as 70 million.

According to informal estimates of wine makers, 40 percent of each year's grape crop is turned into commercial alcohol, which is used in chemical processes or dumped.

An informal estimate put the Games' expenditure at about US$420 million and revenue at US$450 million.

But informal estimates put the turnout at 30 to 40 percent.

Neither the foundation nor the museum would comment on the worth of the collection, but - despite a declining art market - informal estimates put it at hundreds of millions.

Organizers estimated 15,000 to 30,000 protesters attended, while the police gave informal estimates of 10,000 to 20,000.

An informal estimate from Autumn 2006 gives the population as 1,500, "25% of whom have had to move to Jerusalem or Ramallah to find jobs".

An informal estimate when little information is available is called a guesstimate, because the inquiry becomes closer to purely guessing the answer.