In Memoriam: Tributes to J. Scott Armstrong

This issue opens with remembrances of mentor, friend, and cofounder of the International Institute of Forecasters, J. Scott Armstrong. Longtime collaborators Kesten Green and Andreas Graefe detail Scott’s career and broad contributions. Arch Woodside gives a summary of Scott’s scientific legacy.

Special Feature ~ Decision Intelligence

Decision Intelligence Column Editor Niels van Hove explores decision-centric IBP in his article “A Case for a More Decision-centric IBP.” Then Lorien Pratt and colleagues illustrate the prominent role forecasters can play in contributing to decision intelligence by introducing the Causal Decision Diagram.

Forecast Evaluation In his article “The Forecaster’s Evaluation Dilemma,” Malte Tichy argues that flawed evaluation procedures create an incentive to provide dishonest forecasts.

IJF Research Ville Satopää shows the ways of combining probabilistic predictions by pulling the key takeaways from his research published in the International Journal of Forecasting.

Forecast Modeling Shaun Comfort, MD, shares a Bayesian approach for estimating the predictive probability of success, and Stephan Kolassa looks at the various methods for handling multiple seasonality and considers the accuracy vs. runtime trade-off.

Tutorial In this two-part series, Ken Fordyce covers simple linear regression with multiple regression to be
dealt with in Q2.

Public Policy Examining how well social scientists can forecast societal change, Igor Grossmann, Christoph Bergmeir, and Peter Slattery summarize their results from large-scale studies and a major forecasting competition.

Book Reviews

  • Patrick Bower reviews Robert Stahl’s Sales & Operations Planning – An Executive Update.
  • Ira Sohn reviews Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb.
  • Simon Spavound reviews Demand Forecasting for Executives and Professionals by Stephan Kolassa, Bahman Rostami-Tabar, and Enno Siemsen.

Spotlights

  • New Foresight Advisory Board members Sevvandi Kandanaarachchi of CSIRO in Australia
    and Ruben Crevits of OMP in Belgium talk about their backgrounds, research interests, hobbies, and how they got involved with the IIF and Foresight.

Opinion-Editorial

  • Charlie Chase of SAS and Ken Kahn of Old Dominion University make an appeal for the use of consumption-based forecasting.

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