The phrase "a speculative exercise" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing a theoretical or hypothetical activity that involves conjecture or guesswork.
Example: "The researchers conducted a speculative exercise to explore potential outcomes of climate change on local ecosystems."
Alternatives: "a theoretical exploration" or "a conjectural activity".
So this is more of a speculative exercise than anything — he hasn't won anything this year.
It is a speculative exercise to identify a pivot point in the course of any life, but Martin suspects just such a moment occurred when, as a teenager in Arizona, he picked up a book at his local library.
Figuring out what they might have done differently if they were alive today is at best a speculative exercise.Mr Scalia's opinions are famous for their readability.
This study is not a speculative exercise.
Indeed, the remarkable progress of genome sequencing, combined with the development of computational methods for advanced comparative genomics, provides for increasingly reliable reconstruction of ancestral genomes which transforms the study of the evolution of complexity from being a speculative exercise to becoming an evidence-based research direction.
As harrowing as the scenes of Offred's life as a handmaid can be, we might still be able to hold them at arm's length, to treat them as a purely speculative exercise — if not for the flashbacks, which depict life "before," showing how the world got from here to there.
The game of "What If?" history is almost always a useless, speculative exercise - and always definitive on the question of Ralph Nader in the presidential election of 2000, and the history of the world thereafter.
Identifying which particular residues changed in bivalves, however, would be a far more speculative exercise than for Colobines, which diverged far more recently (15 My) than bivalve digestive lysozymes (which, given divergence times for the lineages leading to Chlamys and Mytilus, and Crassostrea, should have occurred in the Early Ordovician, about 480 My ago; [ 75]).
Like all speculative exercises in Trenton, this one requires some selective surveying of the political landscape.
I have seen journalists who I have known almost all my career, and who I regarded as friends, attempt to steal physical documents on private property not because they knew there was a public-interest scoop to be landed, but as a speculative fishing exercise.
(I would note that the teenagers with whom I saw it did appear to be amused, but such empirical considerations are irrelevant in our speculative exercise).
