In many organizations point estimates labelled as 'forecasts' are produced by human judgment rather than statistical methods. However, when these estimates are subject to asymmetric loss they are, in fact, decisions because they involve the selection of a value with the objective of minimizing...

The estimation of the costs of a product or project and the decisions based on these forecasts are subject to much uncertainty relating to factors like unknown future developments. This has been addressed repeatedly in research studies focusing on different aspects of uncertainty; unfortunately,...

This paper discusses three characteristics of subjective probabilities, their consistency, coherence and calibration and shows how they are inter-related. We review research that has investigated these characteristics and evaluate methods that have been developed for the improvement of...

Mistrust is a serious problem for organizations. So much has been written about functional biases and misaligned incentives that one wonders how anyone can trust a forecast provider. Well, now we have some studies that shed new light on the factors that can build or impede trust in forecasting....

Goodwin introduces his article with an incident in Italy when seven people (engineers, scientists, and a civil servant) were jailed following an earthquake in the city of L?Aquila in which 309 people died. At the trial it was alleged that they had failed in their duty by not properly assessing...

The most recent three issues of Foresight featured Steve Morlidge’s encyclopedic rendition of “Guiding Principles” for an organization’s forecasting process. The guiding principles were divided into five classifications: Foundation Principles, Design Principles, Process Principles,...

See title Copyright International Institute of Forecasters, 2012

In this Hot New research column, Goodwin cites a recent blog of Uriel Haran and Don Moore of Ben-Gurion University, who Òpresent a simple method that aims to improve the accuracy of judgmental forecasts involving probability distributions.Ó The authors call their method SPIES: Subjective...

The complementary strengths that management judgment and statistical methods can bring to the forecasting process have been widely discussed. This paper reviews research on the effectiveness of methods that are designed to allow judgment and statistical methods to be integrated when short-term...

The paper reports a study of the impact on user satisfaction and forecast accuracy of user involvement in the design of a forecasting decision support system (FDSS). Two versions of an FDSS were tested via a laboratory study. Version 1, allowed the user control over all aspects of the system...