The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)

The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
- Highlight Loc. 3395-99  | Added on Friday, November 04, 2011, 08:10 PM

The most interesting test of how academic methods fare in the real world was run by Spyros Makridakis, who spent part of his career managing competitions between forecasters who practice a “scientific method” called econometrics—an approach that combines economic theory with statistical measurements. Simply put, he made people forecast in real life and then he judged their accuracy. This led to the series of “M-Competitions” he ran, with assistance from Michele Hibon, of which M3 was the third and most recent one, completed in 1999. Makridakis and Hibon reached the sad conclusion that “statistically sophisticated or complex methods do not necessarily provide more accurate forecasts than simpler ones.”