Quotes & Sayings About Forecasting

Forecasting our futures is built into our psyches because we will soon have to manage that future. We have no choice. No matter how often we fail, we can never stop trying. — Alan Greenspan

Forecasting is simply not a strength of the species; we are much better with tools and narrative storytelling. — Barry Ritholtz

Whenever you try to pick market tops and bottoms, you are making a prediction. Guessing what stock is going to outperform the market is forecasting, as is selling a stock for no apparent reason. Indeed, nearly all capital decisions made by most people are unconscious predictions. — Barry Ritholtz

Aside from its importance to many branches of science, a knowledge of the oceans has a practical value for mankind. The intelligent development of our fishing industries, the laying of oceanic cables, the proper construction of harbor-works, oceanic commerce and navigation, as well as long-range weather forecasting, are all dependent on an understanding of the ocean. — Paul J. H. Schoemaker

I never understand why 'economist makes forecast' is ever a headline. Whether the economist in question is from the International Monetary Fund, a City forecasting group or the Treasury - a forecast is still not news. — Tim Harford

The Fifties and Sixties were years of unreal optimism about weather forecasting. Newspapers and magazines were filled with hope for weather science, not just for prediction but for modification and control. Two technologies were maturing together: the digital computer and the space satellite. — James Gleick

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. — Barry Ritholtz

There is no way that we can predict the weather six months ahead beyond giving the seasonal average — Stephen Hawking

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. As a result, they pursue initiatives that are unlikely to come in on budget or on time or to deliver the expected returns - or even to be completed. In this view, people often (but not always) take on risky projects because they are overly optimistic about the odds they face. I will return to this idea several times in this book - it probably contributes to an explanation of why people litigate, why they start wars, and why they open small businesses. — Daniel Kahneman

Forecasting is very difficult, especially when it involves the future. — Yogi Berra

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

I think the association of economics with forecasting is unfortunate and is down to the fact that one great way to get an investment bank's name on business television is to hire a guy called a Chief Economist who will go and prognosticate. — Tim Harford

For no one knows what lies under the sands of the world's great deserts. No one knows how many times poor Earth has reeled under blows from comets, has lost or captured moons, has changed its air, its very nature. No one knows what has existed and has vanished beyond recovery, evidence for the number of times man has understood and has forgotten again that his mind and flesh and life and movements are made of star stuff, sun stuff, planet stuff; that the sun's being is his, and what sort of events may be expected, because of the meshings of the planets - and how an intelligent husbanding of humanity's resources may be effected based on the most skilled and sensitive of forecasting, by those whose minds are instruments to record the celestial dance. — Doris Lessing

The goal of forecasting is not to predict the future but to tell you what you need to know to take meaningful action in the present — Paul Saffo

Nate Silver is now forecasting Oscar winners. The only area of life in which he has no expertise, ironically, is life itself. — Norman Chad

Don't understand? is, simply, work on the undesirable states of f(x). It is often easier to modify f(x) than to get better knowledge of x. (In other words, robustification rather than forecasting Black Swans.) Example: If I buy an insurance on — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Auto repair, piloting, skiing, perhaps even management: these are skills that yield to application, hard work, and native talent. But forecasting an uncertain future and deciding the best course of action in the face of that future are much less likely to do so. And much of what we've seen so far suggests that a large group of diverse individuals will come up with better and more robust forecasts and make more intelligent decisions than even the most skilled "decision maker." — James Surowiecki

There are domains in which expertise is not possible. Stock picking is a good example. And in long-term political strategic forecasting, it's been shown that experts are just not better than a dice-throwing monkey. — Daniel Kahneman

I believe in analysis and not forecasting. — Nicolas Darvas

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. — Christian Scott

Never forget this simple truism: Forecasting is marketing, plain and simple. — Barry Ritholtz

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. — Tadashi Shoji

Part of my advantage is that my strength is economic forecasting, but that only works in free markets, when markets are smarter than people. That's how I started. I watched the stock market, how equities reacted to change in levels of economic activity, and I could understand how price signals worked and how to forecast them. — Stanley Druckenmiller

The reason why China forecasting has such a poor track record is that Westerners constantly invoke the model and experience of the West to explain China, and it is a false prophet. Until we start trying to understand China on its own terms, rather than as a Western-style nation in the making, we will continue to get it wrong. — Martin Jacques

Forecasting Armageddon has become trendy of late, with a great deal of attention being given to an interpretation of the Mayan Calendar suggesting that Mother Earth is destined for doom in December of 2012. — Seth Shostak

When we advance more confident claims and they fail to come to fruition, this constitutes much more powerful evidence against our hypothesis. We can't really blame anyone for losing faith when this occurs — Nate Silver

In all sorts of markets - music, film, art, and politics - the future of popularity will be harder to predict as the broadcast power of radio and television democratizes and the channels of exposure grow.... The gatekeepers had their day. Now there are simply too many gates to keep. — Derek Thompson

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.' — Howard Rheingold

Life is a self-correcting, negative regulatory system because it is always moving toward a specific target destination in the future. This target destination we call 'self preservation'.

Achieve this goal it must constantly reduce the probabilities that interfere with its movement toward that future target.

Hence, it conserves by self-regulating, like a thermostat set at a specific temperature, as it advances, all the while seeking to re-adapt in accordance with the changes it incurs.

Putting this principle to work in our daily life means learning to adapt to new information while always adhering to a basic plan that can, in general, be modified according to alterations in the data encountered.

Thoughts from; SPIRAL FORECASTING: Nature's Inside Track to Future Success — Nahu Lanham

Chaos theory throws it right out the window. It says that you can never predict certain phenomena at all. You can never predict the weather more than a few days away. All the money that has been spent on long-range forecasting - about half a billion dollars in the last few decades - is money wasted. It's a fool's errand. It's as pointless as trying to turn lead into gold. We look back at the alchemists and laugh at what they were trying to do, but future generations will laugh at us the same way. We've tried the impossible - and spent a lot of money doing it. Because in fact there are great categories of phenomena that are inherently unpredictable. — Michael Crichton

We are convinced that the intelligent investor can derive satisfactory results from pricing of either type (market timing or fundamental analysis via price). We are equally sure that if he places his emphasis on timing, in the sense of forecasting, he will end up as a speculator and with a speculator's financial results." And "The speculator's primary interest lies in anticipating and profiting from market fluctuations. The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices. — Benjamin Graham

The funds from the sale were put into research and general teaching budgets at the university. Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, Inc., is now a growing enterprise with many model and other econometric facilities. — Lawrence R. Klein

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

The quest for certainty in forecasting outcomes can be the enemy of progress. — Nate Silver

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

There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don't know, and those who don't know they don't know. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Satellite photography in the 1970's gave rise to the long-range weather forecast, a month at a time. This in turn gave rise to the observation that the long-range weather forecast was wrong most of the time. In turn, this gave rise to the dropping of the long-range weather forecast and to the admission that really accurate forecasting could only cover the next day or two, and not always then. — Miles Kington

Weatherman says," Kev scoffed. "I wouldn't trust that silly bugger to know it's raining now. — Ransom Riggs

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. — Nate Silver

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

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. — Vinod Khosla

I have seen the future and it's like the present, only longer. — Dan Quisenberry

I deal in facts, not forecasting the future. That's crystal ball stuff. That doesn't work. — Peter Lynch

Investing is an activity of forecasting the yield over the life of the asset; speculation is the activity of forecasting the psychology of the market. — John Maynard Keynes

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. — Murray Rothbard

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. — Darrell Huff

Ways have to be found to maintain university research untramelled by requirements of forecasting application or usefulness. — John Vane

There's a phrase that critics of economic forecasting like to use: Give an economist a result you want, and he'll find the numbers to justify it. This entire city is filled with number crunchers who look at the exact same data and interpret it in widely disparate ways on everything from the federal budget deficit to the Social Security surplus." "Meaning that data can be manipulated." "Of course it can, depending on who's paying the meter and whose political agenda is being furthered, — David Baldacci

Later I learned to improve my forecasting - if necessary by asking the visitor in advance what subjects he intended to raise with Nixon. In — Henry Kissinger

Constraint theory asks: What is the price for doing this? Now one way around constraint theory is declaring your enemy crazy. Crazy and stupid are not concepts used in forecasting. When people say they're really stupid or they're crazy, that's laziness. That means I don't want to think through their position or about what they're really going to do. — George Friedman

The only thing I cannot predict is the future — Amit Trivedi

Science is the key to our future, and if you don't believe in science, then you're holding everybody back. And it's fine if you as an adult want to run around pretending or claiming that you don't believe in evolution, but if we educate a generation of people who don't believe in science, that's a recipe for disaster. We talk about the Internet. That comes from science. Weather forecasting. That comes from science. The main idea in all of biology is evolution. To not teach it to our young people is wrong. — Bill Nye

Expert estimates of probability are often off by factors of hundreds or
thousands. [ ... ] I used to be annoyed when the margin of error was high in
a forecasting model that I might put together. Now I view it as perhaps the
single most important piece of information that a forecaster provides. When
we publish a forecast on FiveThirtyEight, I go to great lengths to document
the uncertainty attached to it, even if the uncertainty is sufficiently
large that the forecast won't make for punchy headlines. — Nate Silver

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

Oh, really? Do you wake up heaving from bloody dreams that
promise destruction like some crazy street guy forecasting the
Apocalypse? 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, like
the 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. — Courtney Vail

The sensation was part of the general strangeness that made him feel like a man waking from a long sleep to find himself in an unknown country among people of alien tongue. We live in our own souls as in an unmapped region, a few acres of which we have cleared for our habitation; while of the nature of those nearest us we know but the boundaries that march with ours. Of the points in his wife's character not in direct contact with his own, Glennard now discerned his ignorance; and the baffling sense of her remoteness was intensified by the discovery that, in one way, she was closer to him than ever before. As one may live for years in happy unconsciousness of the possession of a sensitive nerve, he had lived beside his wife unaware that her individuality had become a part of the texture of his life, ineradicable as some growth on a vital organ; and he now felt himself at once incapable of forecasting her judgment and powerless to evade its effects. — Edith Wharton

I think that intelligent forecasting (company revenues, earnings, etc.) should not seek to predict what will in fact happen in the future. Its purpose ought to be to illuminate the road, to point out obstacles and potential pitfalls and so assist management to tailor events and to bend them in a desired direction. Forecasting should be used as a device to put both problems and opportunities into perspective. It is a management tool, but it can never be a substitute for strategy, nor should it ever be used as the primary basis for portfolio investment decisions. — Peter Cundill

The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it. — Patrick Young

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Economic forecasting has actually got pretty good over the years, though admittedly, we don't always get it right. — Eric Maskin

Commercial institutions, proud of their achievements, do not see that healthy living systems - clean air and water, healthy soil, stable climates - are integral to a functioning economy. As our living systems deteriorate, traditional forecasting and business economics become the equivalent of house rules on a sinking cruise ship. — Paul Hawken

What a well-designed forecasting system can do is sort out which statistics are relatively more susceptible to luck; batting average, for instance, is more erratic than home runs. — Nate Silver

The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession. — Ben Bernanke