Forecasting the future and the future of forecasting

People have been forecasting for thousands of years. They forecast whether it will rain tomorrow, how much wheat will be harvested, how long it will take for your dinner to cook, how many widgets their company will sell next month, what the unemployment figure will be in a year's time, or how much superannuation they will have when they retire.

Some things are relatively easy to forecast and some are unpredictable. Why is it that we can accurately forecast a solar eclipse in 1000 years, but we have no idea whether Google's stock price will rise or fall tomorrow? How can we forecast the daily electricity consumption for the next week with remarkable precision, but we cannot forecast daily COVID-19 cases with the same accuracy?

In his presentation, Professor Rob J Hyndman FAA FASSA will discuss the conditions we need for predictability, how to measure the uncertainty of our forecasts, and how to evaluate whether we are uncertain enough. Rob will draw on his 30 years of forecasting experience, including forecasting Australia's health budget for the next few years, forecasting peak electricity demand in 20 years, and producing weekly forecasts of daily COVID-19 cases for all Australian states since March 2020.

He will also look at how forecasting has changed over the last 50 years, and what forecasting might look like in the future.

About the presenter

Rob J Hyndman FAA FASSA is a Professor of Statistics in the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics at Monash University. From 2005 to 2018, he was Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Forecasting and a Director of the International Institute of Forecasters. Rob is the author of over 200 research papers and five books in statistical science. He is an elected Fellow of both the Australian Academy of Science and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

He received the 2007 Moran medal from the Australian Academy of Science for his contributions to statistical research, particularly in the area of statistical forecasting. In 2021, he received the Pitman medal from the Statistical Society of Australia. For over 30 years, Rob has maintained an active consulting practice, assisting companies and organisations around the world. He has won awards for his research, teaching, consulting and graduate supervision.