Michael Gilliland is a longtime business forecasting practitioner and formerly a Product Marketing Manager for SAS Forecasting. He is on the Board of Directors of the International Institute of Forecasters, and is Associate Editor of their practitioner journal Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. Mike is author of The Business Forecasting Deal (Wiley, 2010) and former editor of the free e-book Forecasting with SAS: Special Collection (SAS Press, 2020). He is principal editor of Business Forecasting: Practical Problems and Solutions (Wiley, 2015) and Business Forecasting: The Emerging Role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (Wiley, 2021). In 2017 Mike received the Institute of Business Forecasting's Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2021 his paper "FVA: A Reality Check on Forecasting Practices" was inducted into the Foresight Hall of Fame. Mike initiated The Business Forecasting Deal blog in 2009 to help expose the seamy underbelly of forecasting practice, and to provide practical solutions to its most vexing problems.
I'm back in the office after two enjoyable days at the Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC. (I hadn't seen that many nerds since the family reunion on my dad's side.) Among the many good sessions was one about building your blog audience by making the blog more search friendly. The
Many forecasting software packages support hierarchical forecasting. You define the hierarchical relationship of your products and locations, create forecasts at one or more levels, and then reconcile the forecasts across the full hierarchy. In a top-down approach, you generate forecasts at the highest level and apportion it down to lower
Perhaps the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to put away a loved one because they've been possessed by the devil. Other than that, though, I've had a good week*. And my week turns even better today, as we all join hands to celebrate World Statistics Day.
