Ballpark figures

[phaloides]

In a news item on the wireless today a discussion included some statistics ( don.t they all, just to confuse most of us and make THEM appear clever ) and one person kept refering to the " ball park figures".
What does this mean.

[THECORBYLOON]

From takeourword.com

".....it has its roots in the field of astronautics in the late 1950's. When splashing down back on earth, a spacecraft was said to be in the ballpark if it landed within a designated area. This was taken from baseball, of course, where balls which were hit within the ballpark were still playable, versus those hit out of the ballpark, which were usually home runs. Therefore, a ball landing inside the park was considered a good thing for the team in the field. Ballpark first appears in print in this astronautics context in 1960, when the San Francisco Examiner noted that "[t]he Discoverer XIV capsule...came down 200 miles from the center of its predicted impact area, but still within the designated �ballpark� area."

The term spread from the astronautics industry and came to be applied to anything which was "close" to correct."

[Grunty]

I would guess that this was on the BBC, which just loves to use American English (morgue, billion for 1,000,000,000, 'take the stand' etc).

[phaloides]

So right grunty, Goddam it why do we all have to put up with it.

[Zen]

Will these "ball park figures" be " ring fenced " ?

[Zen]

http://wossname.thingy.com/newspeak.htm

[tell-me-more]

Hi Phaloides. My sister manages a creche and was negotiating a deal with a local gym to give their members unlimited use of her creche.

The gym owner asked how much he would have to pay for all of his members to be able to use the creche whenever they wanted. As everyone else pays per visit, she didn't have a figure to give him.

"I couldn't say", she told him "you'd have to speak to the owners".

"Well", he asked, "have you got a ball park?"

"Oh yeah...", my darling sister replied, "...we've got a big one, with a slide and everything."