Forecasting Quotes

“Who needs theory when you have so much information? But this is categorically the wrong attitude to take toward forecasting, especially in a field like economics where the data is so noisy.”

“A forecasting game is a kind of simulation, a kind of scenario, a kind of teleconference, a kind of artifact from the future - and more - that enlists the participants as 'first-person forecasters.'”

“The only thing I cannot predict is the future”

“Forecasting is simply not a strength of the species we are much better with tools and narrative storytelling. ”

“A teacher told my mother that I would never become successful, which illustrates the difficulty of long-run forecasting on inadequate data.”

“We spent a lot of time trend forecasting and collaborating on ways to design a fresh line of fashion-forward, affordable luxury.”

“It is important for investors to understand what they do and don't know. Learn to recognize that you cannot possibly know what is going to happen in the future, and any investment plan that is dependent on accurately forecasting where markets will be next year is doomed to failure.”

“Proformas rarely perform; missed projections are more often the norm. Still, we skew them up high, we miss but we try, for proformas which rarely perform.”

“Oh, really? Do you wake up heaving from bloody dreams thatpromise destruction like some crazy street guy forecasting theApocalypse? Did you slam a door in your dad’s face hours before he died?Does everyone, cops included, think you’re a pestering loon ’cause‘accident’ doesn’t sit right with you, nor the many other freakouts, likethe car that keeps showing up on your street, with someone sitting in it,doing like, nothing? No? Oh no? Didn’t think so. Life sucks for everyone.Jump or deal with it.”

“Technological innovations that produced certain major components of the United States military cannot be understood as resulting from a qualitative arms race. Those involved in decisions about new military technologies for the U.S. Army and Air Force simply do not appear to have had access to good intelligence about the Soviet military technological developments. How, then, were decisions made as to technologies to develop?Military research and development decisions are made amid great uncertainties. In an ideal world, such decisions would be managed by estimating the future costs of alternative programs and their prospective military values, and then pursuing the program with the best ratio of cost to value. But...there are tremendous difficulties in forecasting the real value and costs of weapons development programs. These uncertainties, combined with the empirical difficulty American technology managers had in collecting intelligence on the Soviet Union, meant that research and development strategies in the real world tended to become strategies for managing uncertainties. At least two such strategies are conceivable. One of the most politically important can be called, for want of a better phrase, "let the scientists choose." [This approach should be] compared with the theoretical and practical arguments for a strategy that concentrates on low-cot hedges against various forms of uncertainty.”