The phrase "a pessimistic assumption" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when discussing a belief or expectation that is negative or unfavorable regarding a situation or outcome.
Example: "The team's decision to abandon the project was based on a pessimistic assumption about the market's future performance."
Alternatives: "a negative presumption" or "a bleak outlook".
And that would be a pessimistic assumption.
Consumer Reports calculates that a owning a Prius for five years will leave you only $400 better off than owning a similar Corolla this despite a pessimistic assumption by the CR engineers that gas prices will creep up to $4, and despite the $3,150 federal tax credit that comes with the Prius.
Therefore, we conducted a sensitivity analysis under a pessimistic assumption that all patients with unknown HIV status were HIV positive and under an optimistic assumption that they were all HIV negative.
While the alternative scenarios described above (Table 7a c) had only relatively small effects on the cost effectiveness of ART, the impact of a pessimistic assumption about future treatment effect was more substantial.
Most important, the Treasury adopts a deliberately pessimistic assumption for economic growth in projecting the public finances of 2.25% rather than the trend rate of 2.5%, let alone the higher rate that it has now set as an official target.Put all these cautious assumptions together and you get a systematic tendency to under-estimate the buoyancy of the public finances.
Note that setting εxy to 30 is a rather pessimistic assumption that limits the potential of the correction algorithm to improve the quality of data.
To me, either that is an intentionally pessimistic assumption or the company is erring on the side of caution for forward planning in the current operating climate.
Using a slightly more pessimistic assumption, the deficit swells to 5% of GDP.
By stripping out the initial cost and the terminal values of the real estate and replacing these with the market rental, that is, with the opportunity cost of renting the space to another tenant, the company can evaluate the pure retailing project without the bias of an optimistic or pessimistic assumption about future real estate prices.
The evidence may stem from all kinds of sources, but often we start only from the pessimistic assumption that an agent either not present in the natural environment or present only at much lower levels may be harmful to health.
Using the most pessimistic assumption about awareness in Tower Hamlets and Newham, a significance level of 0.05 and a population estimate of 26 000 aged over 30 years, it was established that a sample of 340 completed interviews, equally divided between the two areas, would be appropriate.
