The Business Forecasting Deal
Exposing bad practices and offering practical solutions in business forecasting![NPR joins the unforecastability bandwagon Foresight Cover](https://blogs.sas.com/content/forecasting/files/2017/02/BFD.png)
Today my colleague Alison Bolen, Editor of sascom magazine, sent me this link to an interesting piece on NPR: "Can Economic Forecasting Predict The Future?" In a somewhat lighthearted take on the inability of our economists to predict the future -- or even precisely report the past for that matter
![Forecasting Resources Foresight Cover](https://blogs.sas.com/content/forecasting/files/2017/02/BFD.png)
Although I would like to flatter myself and believe that my readers rely solely on The BFD for all their business forecasting news and information, I realize this is not the case. While other sources may not be as honest, useful, or delightfully entertaining to young and old alike, they
![There is someone meaner than me Foresight Cover](https://blogs.sas.com/content/forecasting/files/2017/02/BFD.png)
Constance Korol oversees the Institute of Business Forecasting & Planning group on LinkedIn. (No, she isn’t the meaner one I will be referring to, but she can swing a nasty rolling pin if you get out of line.) This week Constance posted a Wall Street Journal article “Follow the Tweets,”
![A new favorite forecasting article (by Makridakis and Taleb) Foresight Cover](https://blogs.sas.com/content/forecasting/files/2017/02/BFD.png)
I’m going to put “An Operational Definition of ‘Demand’ – Part 3” on hold for a moment, to announce a new favorite article on forecasting, “Living in a world of low levels of predictability,” by Spyros Makridakis and Nassim Taleb (International Journal of Forecasting 25 (2009) 840-844. IJF is a
![An Operational Definition of "Demand" - Part 2 Foresight Cover](https://blogs.sas.com/content/forecasting/files/2017/02/BFD.png)
In the last post I argued that we don’t have a sure way to measure true (i.e. “unconstrained”) demand. While demand is commonly defined as “what the customer wants, and when they want it,” it is actually a nebulous concept. For a manufacturer, what a customer orders is not the
![Coyotes, Cougars, and An Operational Definition of "Demand" Foresight Cover](https://blogs.sas.com/content/forecasting/files/2017/02/BFD.png)
Sorry about not getting a post out last week, but I spent a good part of it cowering under my desk in fear. The SAS Security office issued a warning that there were wild coyotes roaming the campus, and I was having post-traumatic flashbacks to a painful encounter I once