Is "Estimated number of people who start going home" appropriate for the caption of a figure?

Question

I'm writing a technical report and need to add a line chart to show how many people start going home during each hour (e.g. between 14:00 and 15:00). The numbers of people are counted (estimated) by some technical method. The line chart looks like the following.

My question is whether a caption below is correct or not.

Figure1. Estimated number of people who start going home during an hour

or

Figure1. Estimated number of people starting to go home during an hour

I'm sorry for not mentioning very detail context. If you suggest a lack of information, I'll add it. Thank you.

Answer 1

I think that

Figure 1. Approximate number of people who head home during a given hour

OR

Figure 1. Estimated number of people that leave for home in a given hour

are probably more in-line with what you're trying to convey.

Of course use estimated or approximate as necessary. (From a scientific background I would, personally, say use approximate if only rounding was included, whereas estimated would be more appropriate if educated guesses or specific assumptions were made. As far as I know that's not a hard rule though.)

Answer 2

I would suggest "Estimated number of people leaving for home". The axis label shows that it is for a given hour, so I do not think the "during an hour" (or in a given period) is necessary. Estimated is not counted, as estimation is usually based upon sampling or statistics. If it is directly counted or even close, I would suggest "Approximate" instead of estimated.

Answer 3

I think "Estimated number of people who start going home" is fine, however you should replace the end of the sentence with "in an hour" or "each hour". "During an hour" just doesn't sound quite right.

I also think it's good to reference the time period, since it is important to emphasise the units (in general).