Forecasting Quotes

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. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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. View quote
Paul J. H. Schoemaker
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. View quote
Vinod Khosla
Computer modelling for weather forecasting, and indeed for climate forecasting, has reached its limits. View quote
Piers Corbyn
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. There was a widespread myth of the 1970s, a myth along Tom Kuhn's (1962) Structure of Scientific Revolutions lines. The Keynesianism, which worked so well in Camelot and brought forth a long epoch of price-level stability with good Q growth and nearly full employment, gave way to a new and quite different macro view after 1966. A new paradigm, monistic monetarism, so the tale narrates, gave a better fit. And therefore King Keynes lost self esteem and public esteem. The King is dead. Long live King Milton! Contemplate the true facts. Examine 10 prominent best forecasting models 1950 to 1980: Wharton, Townsend–Greenspan, Michigan Model, St. Louis Reserve Bank, Citibank Economic Department under Walter Wriston's choice of Lief Olson, et cetera. ... M did matter as for almost everyone. But never did M alone matter systemically, as post-1950 Friedman monetarism professed. View quote
Paul Samuelson
It is my hope that in such a way we may again, as Marx claimed, find scientific arguments in the competition between various systems, but up-to-date scientific arguments rather than obsolete ones. This more fundamental research in economics deserves relatively more attention and resources than the more superficial versions of economic research directed at forecasting or analysing very short-term fluctuations in market prices, on which quite some money is being spent to-day. View quote
Jan Tinbergen
Economic forecasting has actually got pretty good over the years, though admittedly, we don't always get it right. View quote
Eric Maskin
I have always believed that people have misjudged the accuracy of economic forecasting... During the 1980s and 1990s, I researched and applied methods of high frequency economic forecasting, to be used by themselves, and for objective establishment of initial conditions for longer range forecasts from structural dynamic models that carry forward the pioneering contributions of Jan Tinbergen. View quote
Lawrence Klein
[T]he successes of modern control theory in the design of highly accurate space navigation systems have stimulated its use in the theoretical analyses of economic and biological systems. Similarly, the effectiveness of computer simulation techniques in the macroscopic analyses of physical systems has brought into vogue the use of computer-based econometric models for purposes of forecasting, economic planning, arid management. View quote
Lotfi A. Zadeh
If human beings can simply decide on what they want to do and then do it, then forecasting is impossible. Free will is beyond forecasting. But what is most interesting about humans is how unfree they are. It is possible for people today to have ten children, but hardly anyone does. We are deeply constrained in what we do by the time and place in which we live. (George Friedman)
Speculative markets have always been vulnerable to illusion. But seeing the folly in markets provides no clear advantage in forecasting outcomes, because changes in the force of the illusion are difficult to predict. View quote
Robert J. Shiller
A teacher told my mother that I would never become successful, which illustrates the difficulty of long-run forecasting on inadequate data. View quote
Clive Granger
When buffering, leveling, and forecasting do not protect their technical cores from environmental fluctuations, organizations under norms of rationality resort to rationing. View quote
James D. Thompson
Never forget this simple truism: Forecasting is marketing, plain and simple. View quote
Barry Ritholtz
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. View quote
Barry Ritholtz
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.' View quote
Howard Rheingold
Future forecasting is all about testing strategies - it's like a wind tunnel. View quote
Jamais Cascio
And this is one way to do technology forecasting; get a sense of where technology is, and then anticipate the next upturn. View quote
Chris Anderson
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. View quote
Patrick Young
Philip Tetlock has just produced a study which suggests we should view expertise in political forecasting--by academics or intelligence analysts, independent pundits, journalists or institutional specialists--with the same skepticism that the well-informed now apply to stockmarket forecasting... It is the scientific spirit with which he tackled his project that is the most notable thing about his book, but the findings of his inquiry are important and, for both reasons, everyone seriously concerned with forecasting, political risk, strategic analysis and public policy debate would do well to read the book. (Philip Tetlock)
The claim by the IPCC that an imposed climate forcing (such as added atmospheric concentrations of CO2) can work through the parameterizations involved in the atmospheric, land, ocean and continental ice sheet components of the climate model to create skillful global and regional forecasts decades from now is a remarkable statement. That the IPCC states that this is a ‘much more easily solved problem than forecasting weather patterns just weeks from now' is clearly a ridiculous scientific claim. View quote
Roger A. Pielke
Climate forecasts (projections) decades into the future have not demonstrated skill in forecasting local, regional, and global climate variables. View quote
Roger A. Pielke
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. View quote
Daniel Kahneman
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. View quote
Lawrence Klein