User:Vipul/Spyros Makridakis

Spyros Makridakis is an Emeritus Professor of Decision Sciences and Distinguished Research Professor at INSEAD and one of the world's leading experts on forecasting, with many journal articles and books on the subject. He is famous as the organizer of the Makridakis Competitions, known in the forecasting literature as the M-Competitions.

Biography
Makridakis was part of the Greek Sailing Team in the 1960 Olympic Games. After that, he joined New York University where he obtained a Ph.D. in 1969. He has held a number of teaching and research positions including positions as research fellow at IIM Berlin and Stanford University. He joined INSEAD (Fountainebleau, France) in 1970 and is currently a professor there.

Empirical testing of forecasting accuracy through competitions and time series compilation
A 1979 paper by Makridakis and Hibon compared 111 time series from a variety of different sources in order to determine the relative effectiveness of different forecasting approaches, and came to the conclusion that simple methods, such as exponential smoothing, outperformed complicated ones. This was followed with publication of results from three Makridakis Competitions: the M-competition in 1982, the M-2 competition in 1993, and the M-3 competition in 2000.

Service to the forecasting community
Apart from organizing the Makridakis Competitions, Makridakis was one of the founders and the first editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Forecasting, a publication of the International Institute of Forecasters (he was editor-in-chief from 1985 to 1987).

Books and popular articles
Makridakis is author of a number of books on forecasting and statistical techniques including:


 * Dance with Chance with Robin Hogarth and Anil Gaba (2010): The book is aimed at a general audience. The authors also appeared in a video along with Nassim Nicholas Taleb to discuss the implications of the themes of the book.
 * Forecasting: Methods and Applications (2nd Edition) with Steven C. Wheelwright and Victor E. McGee (1983)
 * Forecasting, Planning and Strategies for the 21st Century (1990)

Makridakis, Hogarth, and Gaba (authors of the Dance with Chance book) also co-authored an article for the Winter 2010 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.