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A forecast can be defined generally as a statement about an unknown and uncertain event— most often, but not necessarily, a future event. Such a statement may vary greatly in form and content: it can be qualitative or quantitative, conditional or unconditional, explicit or silent on the probabilities involved. A reasonable requirement, however, is that the forecast should be verifiable, at least in principle; trivial predictions that are so broad or vague that they could never be found incorrect merit no consideration, and the same applies to predictions that are rendered meaningless by relying on entirely improbable assumptions or conditions. As for the “event” that is being predicted, it too is to be interpreted very broadly. Thus the forecast may refer to one particular or several interrelated situations (single versus multiple predictions). It may identify a single value or a range of values likely to be assumed by a certain variable (point versus interval predictions). Various combinations of these categories are possible, and some are interesting; for example, an unconditional interval prediction can be viewed as a set of conditional point predictions (that is, the forecaster estimates the range of probable outcomes by setting limits to the variation in the underlying conditions).
