Soyer and Hogarth's article, 'The Illusion of Predictability,' shows that diagnostic statistics that are commonly provided with regression analysis lead to confusion, reduced accuracy, and overconfidence. Even highly competent researchers are subject to these problems. This overview examines the...

Many researchers appear to operate under the impression that causal models lead to more accurate forecasts than those provided by naive models (or “projections”). This study was based on the premise that causal models lead to better forecasts than do naive models in certain situations. The...

Corporate Strategic Planning (CSP) reports on an important study of planning practices and the value of those practices. Though it is a long book, nearly 500 pages, one can get almost the full benefit by reading about 200 pages. In fact, CSP contains an excellent summary (Chapter 11) that is...

This paper summarizes the key conditions under which the index method is valuable for forecasting and describes the procedures one should use when developing index models. The paper also addresses the specific concern of selecting inferior candidates when using the bio-index as a nomination...

Our review of the evidence found that the notion that higher pay leads to the selection of better executives is undermined by the prevalence of poor recruiting methods. Moreover, higher pay fails to promote better performance. Instead, it undermines the intrinsic motivation of executives,...

Policymakers need to know whether prediction is possible and if so whether any proposed forecasting method will provide forecasts that are substantively more accurate than those from the relevant benchmark method. Inspection of global temperature data suggests that it is subject to irregular...

Purpose: To test whether a structured application of persuasion principles might help improve advertising decisions. Evidence-based principles are currently used to improve decisions in other complex situations, such as those faced in engineering and medicine.Approach: Scores were calculated...

When the beach patrol raises the alarm that a shark has been sighted we know what to do, but how should we respond to an alarm that is based on predictions of what will happen 100 years from now and the person raising the alarm tells us we must make great sacrifices now to avoid the predicted...

We consider how judgment and statistical methods should be integrated for time-series forecasting. Our review of published empirical research identified 47 studies, all but four published since 1985. Five procedures were identified: revising judgment; combining forecasts; revising...