Quotes About Forecasting

If that enabled us to predict the succeeding situation with the same approximation, that is all we require, and we should say that the phenomenon had been predicted, that it is governed by the laws.

The successful entrepreneurs on the free market will be the ones most adept at anticipating future business conditions. Yet, the forecasting can never be perfect, and entrepreneurs will continue to differ in the success of their judgments. If this were not so, no profits or losses would ever be made in business.

I make no attempt to forecast the general market -- my efforts are devoted to finding undervalued securities.

Some people skate to the puck. I skate to where the puck is going to be.

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been

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. Claims

As Nassim Taleb pointed out in The Black Swan, our tendency to construct and believe coherent narratives of the past makes it difficult for us to accept the limits of our forecasting ability. Everything makes sense in hindsight, a fact that financial pundits exploit every evening as they offer convincing accounts of the day's events.

Those who know more forecast very slightly better than those who know less. But those with the most knowledge are often less reliable. The reason is that the person who acquires more knowledge develops an enhanced illusion of her skill and becomes unrealistically overconfident. "We reach the point of diminishing marginal predictive returns for knowledge disconcertingly quickly," Tetlock writes.

In the competition with the inside view, the outside view doesn't stand a chance.

Plans are best-case scenarios. Let's avoid anchoring on plans when we forecast actual outcomes. Thinking about ways the plan could go wrong is one way to do it.

Most of us view the world as more benign than it really is, our own attributes as more favorable than they truly are, and the goals we adopt as more achievable than they are likely to be. We also tend to exaggerate our ability to forecast the future, which fosters optimistic overconfidence.

We were forecasting based on the information in front of us—WYSIATI—but the chapters we wrote first were probably easier than others, and our commitment to the project was probably then at its peak. But the main problem was that we failed to allow for what Donald Rumsfeld famously called the "unknown unknowns.

The failures of forecasting in these cases reflect the customers' inability to imagine how much their wishes will escalate over time. They end up paying much more than they would if they had made a realistic plan and stuck to it.

objective ignorance accumulates steadily the further you look into the future.

When forecasting the outcomes of risky projects, executives too easily fall victim to the planning fallacy. In its grip, they make decisions based on delusional optimism rather than on a rational weighting of gains, losses, and probabilities. They overestimate benefits and underestimate costs. They spin scenarios of success while overlooking the potential for mistakes and miscalculations.

Extrapolations are useful, particularly in that form of soothsaying called forecasting trends. But in looking at the figures or charts made from them, it is necessary to remember one thing constantly: The trend-to-now may be a fact, but the future trend represents no more than an educated guess. Implicit in it is "everything else being equal" and "present trends continuing." And somehow everything else refuses to remain equal, else life would be dull indeed.

If you see a flash of lightning far away, you can forecast with a high degree of confidence that a thunderclap is due. Forecasting the consequences of megapolitical transitions involves much longer time frames, and less certain connections, but it is a similar kind of exercise.

But the portion of the forecasting I care the most about is the direction given on future gross margins, because that can be a true indicator of what the business can earn in the future. The gross margin guidance is what will be used to try to figure out next quarter's earnings estimates. That will set the benchmark that has to be beaten next time.

You mustn't take what I say as gospel because no one can second-guess the future.

I always say that my job is not to think about today. My job is to look around the corner and feel and see what's coming, and then warn everybody else.

I realized that most inventions fail not because the R&D department can't get them to work but because the timing is wrong. Inventing is a lot like surfing: you have to anticipate and catch the wave at just the right moment.

I came up with a 'forecasting cell,' which is basically a mixed intention cell or chord that is a complete hybrid of a consonance and a dissonance, and what that does when you are improvising is lead you to where you are supposed to go.

do is make the revenue and profit projections rise 5 to 10 percent per year. If this seems simplistic or silly, just look around for a company that forecasts it will grow 7 percent, then drop 4 percent, then merge with a competitor, then rise 8 percent, and then fall another 11 percent. I've never seen a business forecast like that, even though that's how most end up. They all show their numbers getting bigger every year, rendering the exercise useless.

It is a common failing of man not to take account of tempests during fair weather.