Start

New ideas have to start somewhere, and that somewhere is usually with more ancient ones. My concept for this blog is to start to collect ways to see the future, not literally, but in a way that acknowledges we have past history, including inventory records, sales records, weather data, astronomical records, etc. And, we also have future data. We know where the earth is going to be within the solar system for a good deal into the future. We can reasonably predict that the weather will be hot in the summer and cold in the winter for sometime to come. We understand that people do more at night when there is a full moon than a new moon. (And, I think the reasons for seasons and moon cycles and their results is self-evident to most individuals.) All that being said, there was an IBM commercial that spiked my interest. Basically, using analytics, which I presume means their SPSS platform, IBM figured out that a bakery sold more cake when it was raining out. The goal of this blog, is to find some way to sharpen historical inventory prediction methods with oceanography, meteorology and astronomy.

As far as I can tell, IBM is the only company doing anything close to this type of analysis with real world data. At this point in time, I really don't know how their doing it, but I believe the process can be replicated with some Excel, SPSS, or Minitab skill. The question becomes, "What factors or variables should be included in the analysis?" And, "Is there a broad, universal theory that can handle this data?"

Let's take a look and see what we find.