Forecasting Challenges Quotes

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.

We have the same problem as everyone else: It's very hard to predict the future.

If your investing approach requires that you become Nostradamus to succeed, then you are destined to fail.

It's impossible for us to forecast what's going to happen ten years from now and make a decision today to say what we're going to do.

No one can forecast the economy with certainty.

Any believable prediction will be wrong. Any correct prediction will be unbelievable.

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.

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

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

One thing I learned from meteorology is that being an actual science was no guarantee of exactness.

We really can't forecast all that well, and yet we pretend that we can, but we really can't.

Forecasting is a maddening occupation. It is always fascinating and exciting and rewarding. yet it is also regularly exasperating and infuriating, occasionally even deranging.

We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future. We shall never be able to say, "Ha! My perception, my accounting for that series, will indeed cover its next and future components," or "Next time I meet with these phenomena, I shall be able to predict their total course."

Economists have predicted seven of the last two recessions.

Over the years, CBO has been all over the board on healthcare. The only consistent point is they've missed the mark on different pieces. That's the nature of a scorekeeper.

In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone.

Today, if someone showed me a five-year plan, I'd toss out the pages detailing Years Three, Four and Five as pure fantasy Anyone who thinks he or she can evaluate business conditions five years from now, flunks.

You can't say for certain what will happen to the weather in the long term.

I am actually better at predicting or talking about 30 years later than three years.

Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can.

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.

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

The general public still expects a lot more forecasting accuracy than any of us can deliver.

Pundits are no better at forecasting election outcomes than they would be at predicting the final path of a hurricane. Smart pundits should consider either abandoning this activity or consulting with the geeks before rendering their guesses.

People often say that it is easier to predict the way things are going to be 10 to 20 years in the future than to predict how it is going to be 3 years from now.