Data Science: Forecast/Forecasting (Definitions)

"1. A projection or an estimate of future sales, revenue, earnings, or costs. 2. A projection of future financial position and operating results of an organization." (Jae K Shim & Joel G Siegel, "Budgeting Basics and Beyond", 2008)

"The outcome of a series of exercises and analysis that helps a company, division, or product group to predict the number of units they might sell or produce, or the market share they could attain." (Steven Haines, "The Product Manager's Desk Reference", 2008)

"An estimate or prediction of conditions and events in the project's future, based on information and knowledge available at the time of the forecast. The information is based on the project's past performance and expected future performance, and includes information that could impact the project in the future, such as estimate at completion and estimate to complete." (Project Management Institute, "Practice Standard for Project Estimating", 2010)

"Refers to the operation responding to a wish to 'see in advance' what will happen later in a given field. Forecasting methods typically rely on data from the past to make forward-looking extrapolations; they assume continuity with possible inflections based on expert opinion(s)." (Humbert Lesca & Nicolas Lesca, "Weak Signals for Strategic Intelligence: Anticipation Tool for Managers", 2011)

"Anticipating the future using quantitative techniques, such as mathematical and statistical rules and analysis of past data to predict the future, plus qualitative techniques, such as expert judgment and opinions to validate or adjust predictions." (Joan C Dessinger, "Fundamentals of Performance Improvement" 3rd Ed., 2012)

"A numerical prediction of a future value for a time series. Forecasting techniques are used to identify previously unseen trends and anticipate fluctuations to facilitate better planning." (Jim Davis & Aiman Zeid, "Business Transformation: A Roadmap for Maximizing Organizational Insights", 2014)

"The practice of predicting or estimating a future event or trend, typically from historical data." (Brenda L Dietrich et al, "Analytics Across the Enterprise", 2014)

"A planning tool to help management to cope with the uncertainty of the future. It is based on certain assumptions based on management’s experience, knowledge and judgment and these estimates are projected into the future using techniques such as Box-Jenkins models, Delphi method, exponential smoothing, moving averages, regression analysis and trend projection. The technique of sensitivity analysis is also often used which assigns a range of values to uncertain variables in order to reduce potential errors." (Duncan Angwin & Stephen Cummings, "The Strategy Pathfinder" 3rd Ed., 2017)

"Estimates or predictions of conditions and events in the project's future based on information and knowledge available at the time of the forecast. Forecasts are updated and reissued based on work performance information provided as the project is executed." (Project Management Institute, "Practice Standard for Scheduling" 3rd Ed., 2019)

"Forecast usually refers to a projected value for a metric. Organizations will often create a forecast that is different than their target for a given metric. There are multiple types of forecasting methods for creating forecasts based on past data and usage of them varies widely across organizations." (Intrafocus)