A Quote by Warren Buffett

Forecasts usually tell us more of the forecaster than of the forecast

Warren Buffett

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Forecast Forecasts More Tell Than Us

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Warren Buffett
American - Businessman
Born: August 30, 1930

Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.

Warren Buffett

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

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.

Alan Greenspan

People dont realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but thats as far as we go. And Ive 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.

Alan Greenspan

Experts kill me. Economic experts, that is. Corporations, foundations, publications and governments pay them by the bucketful, and they fill buckets with forecasts that change more frequently than white-collar, workers do shirts. What Lies Ahead is the usual title. What Lies would often be more appropriate. If women's hemlines changed as rapidly as an economist's forecasts, the fashion people and the textile industry would be more profitable than any other. In fact, if all the country's economists were laid end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion.

Malcolm Forbes

Confidence in a forecast rises with the amount of information that goes into it. But the accuracy of the forecast stays the same.

Dean Williams

A potentially useful property of forecasts based on cointegration is that when extended some way ahead, the forecasts of the two series will form a constant ratio, as is expected by some asymptotic economic theory.

Clive Granger

What can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli.

Amor Towles

I have spent too long being able to manipulate the answers I want from market research to rely upon its findings any more than I do weather forecasts.

Charles Saatchi

If you spend more than 13 minutes analyzing economic and market forecasts, you've wasted 10 minutes

Peter Lynch

Immigrants to America help us with the work they do. They challenge us with new ideas, and they give us perspective. This is still the nation that more people around the world want to come to than any place else. That has to tell us something about ourselves. If around the world this is the place people want to come to so much, maybe there's more here than many of us realize-and that many of us can take advantage of.

Rudy Giuliani

It's extraordinary how self-obsessed human beings are. The things that people always go on about is, 'tell us about us', 'tell us about the first human being'. We are so self-obsessed with our own history. There is so much more out there than what connects to us.

David Attenborough

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

Neil Gaiman

I have no plans to get an iPad. I know it will do more things than my Kindle, but I don’t want more things. If I want other stuff - movies, TV shows, weather forecasts, the forthcoming Josh Ritter album - I have my Mac.

Stephen King

Forecasts vary in horizon, from a few seconds up to a few days in financial markets, compared to from one to several months for macro variables. We have to provide uncertainty intervals around the central forecasts to indicate the extent to which we are unclear about the future.

Clive Granger

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

A Quote by Warren Buffett

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