I do a good bit of forecasting in my real job as a tax accountant.  I get that sometimes you can have a plethora of information, take everything into account, and the projection you come up with still varies greatly from the actual results.  There is a science to predicting future results, but it is an inexact science.  Believe me, I have had more than my fair share of misfires when it comes it comes to projections.  I get it that predictions and projections are just that and they almost always differ from reality.  If any of us could predict anything with 100% accuracy, then well, we would. Of course, none of that is going to stop me from pointing out the many baseball pundits who were wrong – in some cases way wrong – in their 2012 preseason predictions for the Baltimore Orioles.  I fully admit to taking a little bit of pleasure every time the O’s leave a national writer’s preseason predictions in the dust.  I won’t even attempt to justify this pleasure, beyond making this one point – just because forecasting is rarely 100% accurate it does not mean that people should be immune from criticism and questioning when the predictions do not pan out.  In the accounting world, you will often hear the acronym “SALY” – which stands for “Same As Last Year”.