What are VGChartz' sources for weekly US numbers?

[Bodhesatva]

Alvar said:

Avinash_Tyagi said:

Alvar said:
Its called educated guessing. Same for the Europe and Japanese numbers. It may be fun to create some discussion around, but don't bet your farm on any of these numbers to actually be correct.

Actually its based on what retailers they do get data from and then extrapolation for the rest

Thats why its an educated guess, they extrapolate from a very small set of data. That doesnt make it any less of a guesstimate.

Uh, yes it does make it less of a guesstimate. Do you have any education in statistics at all? The margin of error drops dramatically and rapidly as your sample size grows. In most cases, 30 samples is enough to regularly get you within 10 percent of the correct answer. 

 

If you think there is no difference between "just guessing with no data" and "estimating based on some data," then I'm afraid you need to go back to school.