Quotes About Forecasts

effective learning from experience can't happen without clear feedback, and you can't have clear feedback unless your forecasts are unambiguous and scorable. Sound familiar? It should. Drezner cited an article about the IARPA tournament.

Accurate forecasts may help do that sometimes, and when they do accuracy is welcome, but it is pushed aside if that's what the pursuit of power requires.

This should not come as a surprise: overly optimistic forecasts of the outcome of projects are found everywhere. Amos and I coined the term planning fallacy to describe plans and forecasts that are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios could be improved by consulting the statistics of similar cases Examples of the planning fallacy abound in the experiences of individuals, governments, and businesses.

Amos and I coined the term planning fallacy to describe plans and forecasts that are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios could be improved by consulting the statistics of similar cases

During the early 1960s, I decided to supplement research support for quantitative economic studies at Pennsylvania by selling econometric forecasts to private and public sector buyers.

I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show they have a sense of humor.

Projections are just bullshit. They're just guesses.

A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.

Hundreds of studies confirm that human forecasts are flawed and biased. Human decision making is not so great either. Again to take just one example, consider what is called the "status quo bias," a fancy name for inertia. For a host of reasons, which we shall explore, people have a strong tendency to go along with the status quo or default option.

I have spent too long being able to manipulate the answers I want from market research to rely upon its findings any more than I do weather forecasts.

I have been fighting climate change for two decades, and people often ask me how I remain hopeful in the face of extreme weather and grim forecasts. The answer is simple: I see countless solutions spreading across the nation and across the world. But we need more investment.

Never make predictions, especially about the future.

Few of these forecasts came true. On the other hand, nobody foresaw the Internet.

When the nuclear age erupted in the 1940s, many forecasts were made about the future nuclear world of the year 2000. When sputnik and Apollo 11 fired the imagination of the world, everyone began predicting that by the end of the century, people would be living in space colonies on Mars and Pluto. Few of these forecasts came true. On the other hand, nobody foresaw the Internet.

You can predict all you want, but everybody knows what predictions get you.

My predictions are notably inaccurate.

Predictions are preposterous.

Predictions are a mug's game.

I will have to pay more attention to Russian weather forecasts in future, to check that Kiev, Warsaw, Riga and Vilnius are not included in their maps.

Larry Kudlow, the president's chief economic adviser, had been questioning the seriousness of the situation. He couldn't square the apocalyptic forecasts with the bouyant stock market. "Is all the money dumb?" he wondered. "Everyone's asleep at the switch? I just have a hard time believing that."*

All economic forecasts are subject to considerable uncertainty. There is always a wide range of plausible outcomes for important economic variables, including the federal funds rate.

The most highly regarded models predict that the climate of New England will become hostile to sugar maples within fifty years.

groupuscules making their lonely cataclysmic prophesies.

There are good waves not that far from Manhattan - on Long Island, in north Jersey. It's true that the best surf around here tends to happen in winter, so you need a good wetsuit, and the time window of good waves is often pretty short, so you have to stay on top of the forecasts.