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.
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,
