Book

Sherden, William A.

The fortune sellers : the big business of buying and selling predictions / William A. Sherden.

New York : John Wiley, ©1998.

xi, 308 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

The Fortune Sellers contains in-depth explorations of the seven most prevalent forecasting professions today - meteorology, economics, investments, technology assessment, demography, futurology, and organizational planning. As Sherden uncovers their historical roots and traces their track records, he deftly reveals just how accurate - or inaccurate - their predictions really are. Fascinating historical facts, scores of actual examples, and a wealth of eye-opening statistics illuminate the difference between reliable real-world information and spurious guesswork. In the Fortune Sellers, you'll discover: how anyone who is counting on a weather forecast more than a day or two in advance might just as well flip a coin; how economics earned its nickname - the "dismal science"--And why it sticks; how profits from prediction work on Wall Street; how academia, business, and the media feed our fascination with science fact and fiction and future technology; how futurists - predictors of societal change - use the infirm foundations of social science to predict everything from utopia to techno-totalitarianism; and how prognosticators failed to predict many milestone events, including the stock market crash of 1929, the recession of the 1980s, and the fall of East Berlin.

Forecasting.

Forecasting -- History.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 286-297) and index.

Also issued online.

Current Copyright Fee: GBP32.00 0.

The Second Oldest Profession -- The Reign of Error -- Future Imperfect -- Voodoo Economics -- Eve of Destruction -- The Last of the Tooth Fairies -- When Chaos Rains -- A Brief History of Weather Forecasting -- The Butterfly Effect -- The National Weather Service and the Problems of Prediction -- "Tonight's Weather Is Dark, Followed by Widely Scattered Light in the Morning" -- The Storm Chasers -- The Long View -- Gray Skies -- The Art of Almanacmanship -- Hold Those Snowblowers--and Flip a Coin -- The Dismal Scientists -- Economists: Who Are They and What Do They Do? -- Misleading Indicators -- From Chaos to Complexity -- The Economy as a Complex Nonlinear Adaptive System -- ECON 101 -- It's the Data, Stupid! -- Self-Inflicted Wounds -- The Market Gurus -- The Pagans of Wall Street -- Random Harvest -- What Does the Market Really Know? -- Fifteen Minutes of Fame -- Financial Junk Mail -- At No Time Has Market Timing Worked -- The Stock Pickers -- The All Americans -- The Old Financier's Almanac -- Irrational Expectations -- Mining Chaos -- "A Touchstone for the Intelligent and a Tombstone for the Audacious" -- Checking the "Unchecked Population" -- The Real Dismal Scientists -- Humans as Predators and Prey -- Population Momentum and Predictability -- A Lot of Accuracy, But Not Much Skill -- The Calculus of Death -- The Wild Card of the Unborn -- The Burgeoning Late Arrivals -- Standing Room Only -- Will There Be Feast or Famine? -- Are We Running Out of Gas? -- Hazardously Wasted? -- The High Price of Success.

Table of contents

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description

97015012

9780471181781

0471358444

9780471358442

0471181781 (cloth : acid-free paper)

36969639

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56640

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303.49 Sherden