Misestimate

[W]e shall infallibly bestow a disproportionate attention upon those which our theory takes into account, while we mis-estimate the rest, and probably underrate their importance.

However, in the absence of real data on actual language use in the aural-oral landscape, there will always exist the possibility to misestimate such impacts.

This was due not to pro-German sympathies but to a plain misestimate (not confined to him) of the real relative strengths of the various political forces.

To illustrate the nature of this problem, a misestimate of 0.01 on a favorite whose true winning probability is 0.20 is, in percentage terms, quite small compared to a misestimate of 0.01 on a long shot whose true winning probability is 0.04.