A forecast sentence is not a drawn range

Forecasting, in this office, is a band on a chart and a sentence that names the band. Trend discovery is the earlier work of finding whether a band is even warranted. Mixing the two is how a sitting becomes a guess in a good suit.

When a series is short, seasonal, or recently redefined, we may refuse a range and stop at the reading of what has already happened. That refusal has cost us a commission. It has also kept our name off a motion that would have blamed us in February.

If you need a single number for a contract, that number is a commercial choice, not a drawing. We can show where last year’s outcome sat in a similar band. We cannot honestly collapse the band to the number you wish you had signed.