Forecasting in Life

The ability to forecast is interesting. It can also be scary. If you knew what would happen to everyone around you accurately, you may be scared to tell them. If you knew what would happen to you, you might be even more so. Ignorance is bliss, in a way.

But more than clairvoyance, it takes observation and experience to make reasonably good predictions about our actions and their consequences, I think. For example, it requires no genius to figure that if you study well, you will do well on an exam. Or that sooner or later, the electorate will get fed up with the party in power and throw it out (in a democracy). That a husband and wife will quarrel. That a marriage will produce kids (in spite of the above quarrels). That a woman will do the household work (at least for another century in India).

Further, that 90% of the celebrity gurus will one day get caught in a scam or a fraud. Actually, make that celebrities and people in positions of power (political, economic or other kinds). The good ones may never (want to) be celebrities. That people will Copy and Paste if they can get away with it. That handwriting is a vanishing art ( I am reading a book about this, more on that later).

That lawyers, to survive, need someone to fight a case against someone else. Judges, ditto. Dentists would be out of work if everyone maintained discipline in eating and drinking habits. Coke would fold up if Americans (and their ad agency) did not exist. Potato production would drop if Germans did not exist. Or, that Abhishek B. will never learn to act. Nor will Arnab learn to listen.

And finally, that I would stop writing this blog if I was the only one reading it. 

Forecasting

The business of forecasting is an interesting one. Today the head of the Indian Met Dept. said that his dept.'s forecast of the monsoon rains might be off the mark. That is the understatement of the year. Drought seems to be staring half of India in its face.

Actually, I like the word soothsayer rather than forecaster. At least it accurately reflects what the guy can really accomplish- which is, to soothe. For people whose nerves are frayed with worldly worries, a soothing word or two would go a long way. For a childless couple, it may be nice to hear that they will have a bundle of joy in their life soon. And so on, if you get the drift. End of the world prophecies are not really needed, because it hardly matters if we know about it or not.

I had read a good joke about an astrologer who would predict whether an impending child would be a girl or boy (in olden times). He would record in a diary the opposite of what he told the would-be parents. Then, if a parent came to him with a complaint, he'd pull out his diary and show it to them. He knew that if he got it right, no one would come back! 

The Business of Forecasting

What would happen if a financial analyst forecast a big loss in his annual forecast for a company? He might get the boot. Forecasters are typically an optimistic bunch, therefore. Imagine if a King's courtier told him that he thought the neighbouring army is going to defeat his master soon? He would have been fed to the lions, or crocodiles, whichever were available nearby.

But imagine for a moment that the world had turned on its head. That forecasters were suddenly gloomy about everything in sight. The oil prices, the food prices, the environment, the stock markets, the Greek civilisation, the Roman Church, the Irish whisky, the American presidency, and the African wildlife, according to them, are going the wrong way. With no redemption in sight.

Is that a futuristic scenario of forecaster behaviour? I am not so sure. Is the world coming to an end even before the forecast doomsday of 2012? From the forecasters' perspective, maybe.