Quotes About Forecasting

With enough information, it is almost impossible "not" to predict people's action.

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.

I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I'm joking, but who would've guessed that computer engineers would've been the sexy job of the 1990s?

A computer can tell you down to the dime what you've sold, but it can never tell you how much you could have sold.

Computer modelling for weather forecasting, and indeed for climate forecasting, has reached its limits.

They're not predicting global warming based on what's happened in the past; they're basing it on what their computer predictions say, and nothing more.

For superforecasters, beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be guarded.

If you have to plan for a future beyond the forecasting horizon, plan for surprise. That means, as Danzig advises, planning for adaptability and resilience.

It follows that the goal of forecasting is not to see what's coming. It is to advance the interests of the forecaster and the forecaster's tribe.

Fuzzy thinking can never be proven wrong. And only when we are proven wrong so clearly that we can no longer deny it to ourselves will we adjust our mental models of the world—producing a clearer picture of reality. Forecast, measure, revise: it is the surest path to seeing better.

I am an economist, not an astrologer.

It is wrong to blame anyone for failing to forecast accurately in an unpredictable world. However, it seems fair to blame professionals for believing they can succeed in an impossible task.

Nanotechnology has been moving a little faster than I expected, virtual reality a little slower.

I'm a lousy predictor of the future.

At first they said skin irritation and sweaty palms. But now they say nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath." "This is human nausea we're talking about. Not rats." "Not rats," he said. I gave him the binoculars. "Well it won't come this way." "How do you know?" he said. "I just know. It's perfectly calm and still today. And when there's a wind at this time of year, it blows that way, not this way.

You can use charts to give you a plus or minus toward your view, but you can never start with the chart.

Most of the time I spend when I get up in the morning is trying to figure out what is going to happen.

The only purpose of economic forecasts is to give astrology a better image.

La qualifica più comune di chi fa previsioni in campo economico consiste non già nel sapere, ma nel non sapere di non sapere. Il suo grande vantaggio è che tutte le previsioni, giusta o sbagliate che siano, vengono rapidamente dimenticate.

self-critical thinkers are better at figuring out the contradictory dynamics of evolving situations, more circumspect about their forecasting prowess, more accurate in recalling mistakes, less prone to rationalize those mistakes, more likely to update their beliefs in a timely fashion, and—as a cumulative result of these advantages—better positioned to affix realistic probabilities

The weatherman is not only blamed for his failure to foretell, he is blamed for the weather itself.

Anyone who says businessmen deal in facts, not fiction, has never read old five-year projections.

Predictions are difficult to make, particularly when they concern the future." —Pierre Dac

Unless you are a fortune-teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy.