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.
The International Institute of Forecasters and SAS® announce two $10,000 grants to support research on forecasting. Per the announcement: Forecasting research has seen major changes in the theoretical ideas underpinning forecasting effectiveness over the last 30 years. However, there has been less impact on forecasting practice. We aim to put this right.
As we saw in the last installment, The Confidence Man works by making every assertion -- no matter how ridiculous, heinous, or false -- with extreme confidence. By following this practice, with never a waver or inkling of self-doubt, roughly 40% of people will follow along in adoration. If you
Everyone is familiar with The Confidence Man. This person can spout any sort of nonsense and easily demonstrable lies, and yet 40% of the people still believe him. The Confidence Man exposes a curious characteristic about human behavior: If you make your assertions with extreme confidence, no matter how obviously
Following is editor-in-chief Len Tashman's preview of the Summer 2020 issue of Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. Preview of Foresight (Summer 2020) The Summer 2020 issue of Foresight—number 58 in this, our fifteenth anniversary year—addresses fundamental issues related to (a) the criteria for choosing among forecasting methods, (b)
You may be familiar with the online text Forecasting: Principles and Practice, by two of the very top contributors in the field, Rob Hyndman and George Athanasopoulos. (Both are at Monash University in Australia. Rob was longtime Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Forecasting, and George is currently President of
As the Virtual SAS® Global Forum 2020 is running live online, we have a guest blog post today from Udo Sglavo, Vice President of Analytics R&D at SAS. Udo is a long time colleague and co-editor (with me and Len Tashman) of Business Forecasting: Practical Problems and Solutions. In this
I hope you will join me (and over 20,000 of my closest friends) on Tuesday June 16, for the complimentary Virtual SAS Global Forum 2020. The SAS event team has put together an impressive program of live and recorded content. You can create your own virtual experience, selecting from multiple
Forecasting with SAS®: Special Collection SAS Press has added to its selection of free downloadable eBooks with the new Forecasting with SAS®: Special Collection. From the description: Want to get the most insight out of your data and improve the quality of your forecasts? SAS offers many different solutions to
In recent posts (March 26, April 21) we've looked at forecasting in the face of chaos and disruption. We've seen that traditional time series forecasting methods (used during "normal" times) can be creatively augmented with additional methods like clustering, similarity analysis, epidemiologic models, and simulation. While it is unreasonable to
Forecasting is a daunting task during normal conditions, and even more so during a disruption. But in times of greatest stress our smartest and most creative people stand out, and our true leaders emerge. You'll find these kinds of leaders among my colleagues at SAS -- smart and creative people
Following is editor-in-chief Len Tashman's preview of the Spring 2020 issue of Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. Preview of Foresight (Spring 2020) This Spring 2020 issue of Foresight—number 57 since the journal began in 2005— leads off with Associate Editor Mike Gilliland’s discussion of The M4 Forecasting Competition:
Forecasting During Chaos The Institute of Business Forecasting has produced an 80-minute virtual town hall on "Forecasting & Planning During the Chaos of a Global Pandemic." The on-demand video recording is available now and well worth a look. There is much solid practical guidance from an experienced panel: Eric Wilson,
Fildes and Goodwin (F&G) observed the subject (the regional subsidiary of a pharmaceutical company) was using a statistical forecasting system, but not fully trusting its output. Forecasters were making overrides to the system generated forecast to make it look like what they believed it should (e.g., following a life-cycle curve
Two weeks ago we looked at the first two steps in effecting forecasting process change: Justify your suspicions with data Communicate your findings That was the easy part. So why is it that so many organization realize they have a forecasting problem, yet are unable to do anything about it?
What if you suspect something is wrong with your forecasting process? What if the process is consuming too much time and too many resources, while still delivering unsatisfactory results (lousy forecasts). What can you do about it? This post looks at the first two steps to effecting meaningful forecasting process
With 2018's M4 Forecasting Competition behind us (although analysis, interpretation, and debate continue), the new M5 Competition starts March 2. Running through June 30, M5 is utilizing actual data provided by Walmart. It will be implemented using Kaggle's Platform, with $100,000 in prize money. Forecasting practitioners are encouraged to participate,
The International Journal of Forecasting has published its 2020-Q1 issue, guest edited by Spyros Makridakis and Fotios Petropoulos, and dedicated entirely to results and commentary on the M4 Forecasting Competition. This issue should be of great interest and value to business forecasting practitioners, and you get online access to it
Following is editor-in-chief Len Tashman's preview of the Winter 2020 issue of Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. Preview of Foresight (Winter 2020) This Winter 2020 issue of Foresight—number 56 since the journal began in 2005—formally introduces a new section: Integrated Business Planning (IBP), the meaning of which is evolving
Foresight Editor-in-Chief Len Tashman's Preview of the Fall 2019 Issue This 55th issue of Foresight opens with an article from Phillip Yelland, Zeynep Erkin Baz, and David Serafini of the Data Science/AI team at Target: Forecasting at Scale: The Architecture of a Modern Retail Forecasting System. The challenge of scale
The SAS Forecasting R&D team has an open position for a Forecasting and Machine Learning Specialist (apply here). What you’ll do As a Forecasting and Machine Learning Specialist on the SAS Forecasting R&D team, you will help create innovative software to apply cutting-edge statistical methods to automated enterprise-scale business forecasting processes. You will:
Artificial Intelligence for Forecasting Can artificial intelligence augment and amplify our forecasting efforts? Will AI impact our forecasting roles and processes? Does AI deliver the automation and forecast accuracy we've been pursuing? These are the sorts of questions to be addressed by a stellar panel of world-class experts at the
The International Institute of Forecasters and SAS® announce two $10,000 grants to support research on forecasting. Per the announcement: Forecasting research has seen major changes in the theoretical ideas underpinning forecasting effectiveness over the last 30 years. However, there has been less impact on forecasting practice. We aim to put
Back in 2013 the BFD asked Is one number forecasting a new worst practice?, concluding yes. Certainly, it is important for an organization to be aligned, with different functions like sales, supply chain, and finance not going off independently in their own directions, doing whatever they want. But trying to
Editor-in-Chief Len Tashman's Preview of the Summer 2019 Issue of Foresight This 54th edition of Foresight features an important new take on the role of judgment in the forecasting process. Normally, we see judgment applied to adjust a statistical forecast or supply a forecast directly. But here Fotios Petropoulos proposes
Special Feature Section Our special feature section in this 53rd issue of Foresight poses the question, Are You a Victim of Your Models? Here Tom Willemain, a longtime contributor to the journal, ponders why modeling and optimization algorithms haven’t displaced “gut instinct” in supply-chain forecasting as much as one would
The value of any data lies, of course, in its use to make better decisions that lead to more favorable results – like increased revenue and profit, improved customer satisfaction, and increased safety. The Internet of Things is giving us a lot more data. The challenge is how to manage
This issue's preview is provided by Ralph Culver, Foresight's manuscript editor. Preview of Winter 2019 issue of Foresight The Winter 2019 issue of Foresight—number 52—kicks off with Simon Clarke’s enthusiastic review of The Little Illustrated) Book of Operational Forecasting by Dr. Steve Morlidge. Every year brings us new, inexperienced business-operations
Applying machine learning approaches to forecasting is an area of great research interest. Progress is being made on multiple fronts, for example: In the M4 Forecasting Competition, completed earlier this year, the top two performers utilized machine learning with traditional time series forecasting methods. At the link you'll find full
This Fall 2018 issue of Foresight, our 51st, opens with Fotios Petropoulos’s review of Paul Goodwin’s latest book, How to Profit from Your Software: A Best-Practice Guide for Sales Forecasters. Fotios notes that the author doesn’t single out any one software system, but keeps the discussion general and so applicable to many products.
Continuation of Q&A from the September 19, 2018 ASA web lecture "Why Are Forecasts So Wrong? What Management Must Know About Forecasting." Why Are Forecasts So Wrong? Q&A (Part 2) Q: Should we make a distinction between business as usual forecasts and major change forecasts and do FVA for these
