The Pareto Rule of Prediction/Forecast - from "The signal and the noise - Silver"

Great viz that explains how your first 20% of effort provides you an 80% of accuracy level on your predictions/forecasts, i.e. by applying rules of critical thinking and basic statistics you will get a very good prediction/forecast of the possible future scenarios.

In a business environment, where what it counts is the relative position of your predictions/forecasts vs. the ones competition does, 80% could be good enough or really below par and that can make a huge difference.

At the end if you do not have any forecasts/prediction tool, investing 20% of your perfect effort (that depends on the question you are trying to address) will be a game changer.

ps.: Forecast is different from Prediction (see a previous substack on that)

The signal and the noise - Silver