conjecture n
1. a hypothesis that has been formed by speculating or conjecturing (usually with little hard evidence); "speculations about the outcome of the election"; "he dismissed it as mere conjecture" [syn: speculation]
2. a message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence [syn: guess, supposition, surmise, surmisal, speculation, hypothesis]
3. reasoning that involves the formation of conclusions from incomplete evidence v : to believe especially on uncertain or tentative grounds; "Scientists supposed that large dinosaurs lived in swamps" [syn: speculate, theorize, theorise, hypothesize, hypothesise, hypothecate, suppose]

Conjecture \Con*jec"ture\ (; 135?), n. [L. conjectura, fr. conjicere, conjectum, to throw together, infer, conjecture; con- + jacere to throw: cf. F. conjecturer. See Jet a shooting forth.] An opinion, or judgment, formed on defective or presumptive evidence; probable inference; surmise; guess; suspicion. He [Herodotus] would thus have corrected his first loose conjecture by a real study of nature. --Whewell. Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm. --Milton.

Conjecture \Con*jec"ture\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Conjectured; p. pr. & vb. n. Conjecturing.] [Cf. F. conjecturer. Cf. Conject.] To arrive at by conjecture; to infer on slight evidence; to surmise; to guess; to form, at random, opinions concerning. Human reason can then, at the best, but conjecture what

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A conjecture is a proposition that is unproven but appears correct and has not been disproven. Karl Popper pioneered the use of the term "conjecture" in scientific philosophy. Conjecture is contrasted by hypothesis (hence theory, axiom, principle), which is a testable statement based on accepted grounds. In mathematics, a conjecture is an unproven proposition or theorem that appears correct.

Until recently, the most famous conjecture was Fermat's Last Theorem. The conjecture taunted mathematicians for over three centuries before Andrew Wiles, a Cambridge University research mathematician, finally proved it in 1995, and now it may properly be called a theorem.

Other famous conjectures include:

The Langlands program is a far-reaching web of these ideas of 'unifying conjectures' that link different subfields of mathematics, e.g. number theory and the representation theory of Lie groups; some of these conjectures have since been proved.

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