#10 is not only fine, but ought to be mandatory. How can you expect anyone ever to "engineer" something if they are not capable of making (and refining) rough estimates?
Sure, often you just have to measure. But I'd much rather work with the person who can get an order-of-magnitude estimate from a 10 minute measure than the person who gets a reasonably accurate estimate but only after taking half a day to set up the experiment.
Sure, often you just have to measure. But I'd much rather work with the person who can get an order-of-magnitude estimate from a 10 minute measure than the person who gets a reasonably accurate estimate but only after taking half a day to set up the experiment.