Graham Bentley: Profs no better than journos in forecasting the future

At the various investment committees I will attend, my peers will sagely refer to charts and data, opining on the investment year ahead. Mostly they'll be wrong, of course. We believe that more information leads to more accurate forecasts, and hence better decisions.The evidence, however suggests ‘experts' are overconfident regarding their ability to forecast. Research (1) demonstrates that experts' confidence in their forecasting rises in line with the amount of information available, and yet the accuracy falls. Predictions rely on information that is for the most part "noise". ...