What Can Be Forecast?
Forecasting is required in many situations: deciding whether to build another power generation plant in the next 5 years requires forecasts of future demand; scheduling staff in a call centre next week requires forecasts of call volume; stocking an inventory requires forecasts of stock requirements. Forecasts can be required several years in advance (for the case of capital investments), or only a few minutes beforehand (for telecommunication routing). Whatever the circumstances or time horizons involved, forecasting is an important aid in effective and efficient planning.
Some things are easier to forecast than others. The time of the sunrise tomorrow morning can be forecast very precisely. On the other hand, currency exchange rates are very difficult to forecast with any accuracy. The predictability of an event or a quantity depends on how well we understand the factors that contribute to it, and how much unexplained variability is involved.
Forecasting...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References and Further Reading
Armstrong JS (1985) Long-range forecasting: from crystal ball to computer. Wiley, New York
Corradi V, Swanson NR (2006) Predictive density evaluation. In: Handbook of economic forecasting, North-Holland, Amsterdam
Hyndman RJ, Koehler AB (2006) Another look at measures of forecast accuracy. Int. J. Forecasting 22(4):679–688
Hyndman RJ, Koehler AB, Ord JK, Snyder RD (2008) Forecasting with exponential Smoothing: the state space approach. Springer - Verlag, Berlin
Makridakis S, Hibon M (2000) The M3-competition: results, conclusions and implications. Int. J. Forecasting 16:451–476
Makridakis S, Wheelwright SC, Hyndman RJ (1998) Forecasting: methods and applications, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this entry
Cite this entry
Hyndman, R.J. (2011). Forecasting: An Overview. In: Lovric, M. (eds) International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04898-2_256
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04898-2_256
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-04897-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-04898-2
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsReference Module Computer Science and Engineering