Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Problem of Business Forecasting: Papers Presented at the Eighty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association, Washington, December 27-29, 1923
What is true of human conduct in general is true of conduct in business. When a man enters business, he enters a forecasting profession. He may forecast badly or well, but forecast he must. He may scorn business fore casters, but he cannot help being one. He may Shun sta tistics, but he cannot help using them. Since business is essentially risk-taking with the expectation of profits, every enterpriser must run risks; and, as a risk-taker, he is necessarily a business forecaster. That is to say, his decision to take a risk is based on predictions concerning the degree of the risk and the reward for taking it. He must decide when to make loans, when to buy cotton, when to build a factory, what styles of Shoes to manu facture, when to increase his output. In every case his decision to take one risk rather than another is in?uenced by his expectation concerning the future the trend of interest rates, the price of cotton next week, building costs next April, the demand for tanned shoes next spring, the output of competitors next year. Indeed, any enterpriser could fill an entire volume with the decisions he is forced to make in the ordinary course of business, and every one of them would involve forecasting on a statistical basis.
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