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.
Sometimes you can't forecast worth a darn because something is just not forecastable. Being "unforecastable" doesn't mean you can't create a forecast, because you can always create a forecast. It just means there is so much instability or randomness in your demand patterns that even sophisticated forecasting methods don't help
Life Lesson from a Black Eye I'm fond of arguing that Plato is the father of philosophy. Apparently that is the wrong argument to make, in a bar, with a stranger, when said stranger takes the opposing view. (And I thought politics, religion, and his mother were the only things never
Among the suitable-for-blog-publication-without-risking-my-job definitions of masochism is this: A willingness or tendency to subject oneself to unpleasant or trying experiences So to be a forecaster, must you also be a masochist? Few people enjoy the difficulties and degradation that go with being a forecaster, so few are willing to do it
