In areas from medicine to climate change to economics, we are faced with huge challenges and a need for accurate forecasts, yet our ability to predict the future has been found wanting. The basic problem is that complex systems such as the atmosphere or the economy cannot be reduced to simple...

Shortly after the 2012 presidential election, Orrell reviews Nate SilverÕs book on forecasting. Copyright International Institute of Forecasters, 2013

“We have become increasingly aware that our businesses and societies are embedded in complex systems – the economic system, the climate system, and so on – which are globally linked and may be susceptible to sudden change. Forecasting tools developed for the demands of classical astronomy...

Orrell and McSharry, authors of A Systems Approach to Forecasting (issue 14 of Foresight) reply to commentaries by Roy Batchelor, and Paul Goodwin and Robert Fildes. Copyright International Institute of Forecasters, 2009

Orrell responds to Adam Gordon’s article in issue 19 of Foresight: The Boundaries of Quantitative Forecasting Methods: Respecting the Limits of Determinism Copyright International Institute of Forecasters, 2010

In a 2009 news article entitled ÒHow Did Economists Get It So Wrong?,Ó Paul Krugman wrote, ÒThe economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive- looking mathematics, for truth.Ó In this article, David Orrell asks if the same could be said...

In areas from medicine to climate change to economics, we are faced with huge challenges and a need for accurate forecasts, yet our ability to predict the future has been found wanting. The basic problem is that complex systems such as the atmosphere or the economy can not be reduced to simple...