Quotes About Forecasting

Since the global financial crisis and recession of 2007-2009, criticism of the economics profession has intensified. The failure of all but a few professional economists to forecast the episode - the aftereffects of which still linger - has led many to question whether the economics profession contributes anything significant to society.

Now it will take a long time to scale biofuels, but I'm the only one in the world forecasting oil dropping in price to $35 a barrel by 2030. I'll put it on the record: Oil will not be able to compete with cellulosic biofuels. If you do it from food, the food will get so expensive you can't make fuel out of it.

I think bubbles are things people see with 20/20 hindsight. If you look at any particular period where prices go up and then they go down, you will always find people who predicted that they would go down. Those are the people you pay attention to.

Predicting oil prices is anyone's guess.

A cybersecurity expert can become well versed in technical details such as conducting penetration tests, using encryption tools, setting up firewalls, and much more—and still be unable to realistically assess their own skills at forecasting future events.

The real problem of prediction, in other words, is not that we are universally good or bad at it, but rather that we are bad at distinguishing predictions that we can make reliably from those that we can't.

Prophecy is only sometimes helpful.

It's really impossible to project ahead even six months in this business.

We don't prognosticate macroeconomic factors, we're looking at our companies from a bottom-up perspective on their long-run prospects of returning.

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

We have for many years included a price of carbon in our outlook. We put it in as a cost. Everything gets tested against it.

His favoured objects of contemplation were economic facts, usually in statistical form. He used to say that his best ideas came to him from 'messing about with figures and seeing what they must mean'. Yet he was famously sceptical about econometrics – the use of statistical methods for forecasting purposes. He championed the cause of better statistics, not to provide material for the regression coefficient, but for the intuition of the economist to play on.

It was the income-determination model, based on the multiplier, together with the consequent development of national income statistics, which made Keynesian economics acceptable to policy-makers, since it offered them a seemingly secure method of forecasting and controlling the movement of such 'real' variables as investment, consumption, and employment.

Political and economic experts, for example, actually do worse than dart-throwing monkeys when it comes to making long-term predictions.

No one can make it rain, but I'm very good at knowing when the rain will come.

the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

If you have to forecast, forecast often.

investigation into the future can make it possible to avoid unpleasant events.

And this is one way to do technology forecasting; get a sense of where technology is, and then anticipate the next upturn.

Using a forecasting company is like going to a fortune-teller. If you believe the company and the color does not sell, who do you blame? The forecasters? No, you blame yourself.

There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

He who lives by the crystal ball will eat shattered glass.

Future forecasting is all about testing strategies - it's like a wind tunnel.

Punditry is like weather forecasting: the winds can shift without warning. I remember when nobody would bet a McDonald's Quarter Pounder that Bill Clinton would win the White House.