Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Incorporating surprises into Predictive Analytics

Not a Predictive Visualization
Watercolour
© 2019 Charlene Brown

Computers are capable of pattern recognition, trend analysis, extrapolation and prediction if the task can be formulated and solved mathematically.

But surprises – Black Swans or Wild Cards such as Alicorns – can alter the data.  When that happens, computerized analytics must yield to common sense, imagination, heuristic exploration of possibilities and visualization.

I’ll write more about these and other surprises in a blog post about my recent Future Forecasting class at the University of Victoria.