Quotes About Forecasting

The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history

If you ever do have to heed a forecast, keep in mind that its accuracy degrades rapidly as you extend it through time.

but at least I know that I cannot forecast and a small number of people (those I care about) take that as an asset.

There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell them. As the great philosopher of uncertainty Yogi berra once said, Don't waste your time trying to fight forecasters, stock analysts, economists and social scientists, except to play pranks on them.

Makridakis and Hibon reached the sad conclusion that statistically sophisticated or complex methods do not necessarily provide more accurate forecasts than simpler ones.

Forecasting (in words) bears no relation to speculation (in deeds).

Furthermore, people who make forecasts professionally are often more affected by such impediments than those who don't.

No one in particular is a good predictor of anything. Sorry.

Anyone who causes harm by forecasting should be treated as either a fool or a lier. Some forecasters cause more damage to society than criminals.

When constrained systems, those hungry for natural disorder, collapse, as they are eventually bound to, since they are fragile, failure is never seen as the result of fragility. Rather, such failure is interpreted as the product of poor forecasting.

What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it. This

it makes them much less dependent on economic forecasts. This allowed them to shrug off later crises.2

those who are very good at predicting the past will think of themselves as good at predicting the future

What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it.

Fat Tony did not believe in predictions.

or mistaking a profitable bet for good forecasting—not convexity of payoff and optionality).

their intention was to bring a critical "balance" and use me as a counter to the numerous imaginative forecasts

Teller. We have always been suckers for those who tell us about the future

In a sense, there are as many forecasting methods as there are forecasters. But I would argue that most projections are derived from two major methods: macro-econometric models and eclectic judgment.

For superforecasters, beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be guarded," wrote Philip Tetlock after the study had been completed. "It would be facile to reduce superforecasting to a bumper-sticker slogan, but if I had to, that would be it.

We're better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it'll rain on auntie's garden party three Sundays from now.

I shall always consider the best guesser the best prophet.

It ain't no use putting up your umbrella till it rains!

There are many types of economic data, but the type considered by Rob Engle and myself is know as time series.