Zitat des Tages über Prognose / Forecast:
Whenever I see a forecast written out to two decimal places, I cannot help but wonder if there is a misunderstanding of the limitations of the data, and an illusion of precision.
We really can't forecast all that well, and yet we pretend that we can, but we really can't.
Workers and jobs are naturally heterogeneous, and the quality of their interaction when paired is difficult to forecast.
No one can forecast the economy with certainty.
Most American writers don't get asked their opinion on current affairs, whereas in Europe and England, we still do. There are writers here who are the most sophisticated commentators, but they're not asked. Like Don DeLillo, who sort of forecast most of the modern world before it happened.
The key to making a good forecast is not in limiting yourself to quantitative information.
Dad loved computer games, and I would sit beside him for hours with graph paper, drawing out plans to try and forecast the moves he should make while he worked the computer controller.
My youth held little forecast of a career in biomedical research. I was born on February 22, 1936, in York, Pennsylvania, and spent my childhood in a rural area on the west bank of the Susquehanna River.
Some things, like the orbits of the planets, can be calculated far into the future. But that's atypical. In most contexts, there is a limit. Even the most fine-grained computation can only forecast British weather a few days ahead. There are limits to what can ever be learned about the future, however powerful computers become.
In college, I was a weather anchor for the local news. I would 'borrow' my forecast from The Weather Channel.
Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?
You don't want to influence the same system you are trying to forecast.
The most reliable way to forecast the future is to try to understand the present.
I'll admit that I'm not quite certain how to sum up an entire year in music anymore; not when music has become so temporal, so specific and personal, as if we each have our own weather system and what we listen to is our individual forecast.
The population forecast for the United States in 1970 is 170 million. The population forecast for Russia alone in 1970 is 251 million. The implications are clear.
We futurists have a magic button. We follow every statement about a failed forecast with 'yet.'
In 2009, it was forecast that the number of single-person households would increase by two million in 10 years, suggesting that social isolation will only get worse.
One thing I've noticed about history - you can search on newspapers going back hundreds of years, search for 'economic forecast,' you don't find it. It would be very rare to find it.
People don't realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but that's as far as we go. And I've had a very successful career as a forecaster, starting in 1948 forward. The number of mistakes I have made are just awesome. There is no number large enough to account for that.
My one remaining professional ambition is to read the shipping forecast. I live in hope.
You don't need to know this - but here goes: due to some acquired infantilism, I feel compelled to fall asleep listening to the radio. On a good night, I'll push the frail barque of my psyche off into the waters of Lethe accompanied by the midnight newsreader - on a bad one, it's the shipping forecast.
It is indeed true that the stock market can forecast the business cycle.
Many people have been getting too casual about climbing Everest. I forecast a disaster many times.
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.
Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can.
