Category Archives: Conference talks

ISF 2020: A geometry inspired hierarchical forecasting methodology

The slides for my presentation at the International Symposium on Forecasting 2020 are available here. Building on the work by Pangiotelis et al. (2020) we investigate the implications of the geometric interpretation of hierarchical forecasting further. We propose a new framework for generating hierarchical forecasts, which encompasses previous hierarchical methods while providing insights on their… Read More »

ISF2019 talk: Cross-temporal coherent forecasts for tourism forecasting

This year’s International Symposium on Forecasting has been a great success. Very exciting talks and large attendance from both academics and practitioners. I really enjoy conferences that the two groups interact organically: only this way research is both relevant and adopted fast, so that it makes a difference! This year I was invited by Haiyan… Read More »

ISF2018 Presentation: Beyond summary performance metrics for forecast selection and combination

Nikolaos Kourentzes, Ivan Svetunkov and Stephan Kolassa, ISF2018, 20th June 2018. In doing forecast selection or combination we typically rely on some performance metric. For example, that could be Akaike Information Criterion or some cross-validated accuracy measure. From these we can either pick the top performer, or construct combination weights. There is ample empirical evidence… Read More »

ISF2018 Presentation: Information Sharing in the Presence of Promotions in a Supply Chain

Patrick Saoud, Nikolaos Kourentzes and John Boylan, ISF2018, 20th June 2018 Many supply chains experience the Bullwhip effect, defined as the upstream amplification of demand variability. This information distortion results in a misalignment of forecasts, generating expensive business costs. A proposed remedy in the literature is the sharing of Point of Sales information data among… Read More »

ISF 2018 Presentation: The inventory impact of including macroeconomic leading indicators in global supply chain management

Yves R. Sagaert, Nikolaos Kourentzes, Stijn De Vuyst and El-houssaine Aghezzaf, ISf2018, 19th June 2018 Supply chain management is increasingly performed at a global level. The decision process is often based on tactical sales forecasts, which has been shown to benefit from including relevant exogenous information. Leading indicators that cover different aspects of macroeconomic dynamics… Read More »

ISF2018 Presentation: Interpreting algorithmic and qualitative information when making judgmental forecast adjustments

Anna Sroginis, Robert Fildes and Nikolaos Kourentzes, ISF2018, 19th June 2018 Despite the continuous improvements in statistical forecasting, human judgment remains essential in business forecasting and demand planning. Typically, forecasters do not solely rely on statistical forecasts, which are obtained from various Forecasting Support Systems (FSS); they also adjust forecasts according to their knowledge, experience… Read More »

ISF 2018 Presentation: Estimating the market potential pre-launch with search traffic

Oliver Schaer, Nikolaos Kourentzes and Robert Fildes, ISF2018, 18th June 2018 With shorter product life-cycles and increased competition, generating pre-launch forecasts is a vital task for companies. Forecasting the success of a new product is challenging as one need to estimate the market potential. In practice, this is typically done by expert judgment. However, there… Read More »

ISF 2018 Presentation: The dynamics of judgmental adjustments

Robert Fildes and Nikolaos Kourentzes, ISF2018, 19th June 2018 Judgement plays a central role in forecasting, as statistical forecasts are often modified before informing user decisions. There is strong evidence that judgemental adjustments can be beneficial, yet inconsistent, often harming forecast accuracy. This has motivated research into how to best manage judgemental adjustments to maximise… Read More »

ISF 2017 presentation: A hierarchical approach to forecasting Scandinavian unemployment

This is joint work with Rickard Sandberg and looks at the implicit connections enforced by hierarchical time series forecasting, between the nodes of the hierarchy, contrasting them to VAR models that captures connections explicitly. Abstract The four major Scandinavian economies (Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway) have high workforce mobility and depending on market dynamics the… Read More »

ISF2017 presentation: DIY forecasting – judgement, models & judgmental model selection

This is joint work with Fotios Petropoulos and Kostantinos Nikolopoulos and discusses the performance of experts selecting forecasting models, against automatic statistical model selection, as well as providing guidelines how to maximise the benefits. This is very exciting research, demonstrating the both some limitations of statistical model selection (and avenues for new research), as well… Read More »