An estimate should not lose its qualifying words on the way to a headline.

An estimate leaves its author with all the qualifications attached, roughly, under these assumptions, within this range. By the time it reaches a headline the hedges have been stripped and the middle number is presented as fact, and everyone downstream reasons from a certainty that never existed.

When a striking figure reaches you, go and find how it was originally stated. And when you pass numbers along, carry the qualification with them even at the cost of a clumsier sentence. The hedge is not decoration, it is a substantial part of the finding.