A critique of recent age forecast failures: An

interpretation of Nate Silver's Signal and Noise

Forecasting traffic is widely regarded to be the first step in the process of any planning or renovation
model. It is not only the primary step in determining the practicality of a project by figuring out the scale
of benefit rendered by the outcome of a project, but also the extent of its criticality. Travel demand is
also an important socio-economic indicator of development, functional capacity and administrative
quality within an executive region. As with forecasting of any and every form, travel demand or traffic
forecasting is a tricky business. The complexity of estimating this quantity is rendered no less intricate
due to its multifaceted nature: travel demand is a function of a number of factors. These factors not only
vary on the basis of location and the time period of the forecast, but also across the intrinsic values of
the predictors used in the model.

Accuracy often is not the most sought after skill among forecasters, says Silver. The consequence of this
becomes particularly dangerous in time-sensitive events like hurricane Katrina. Residents of New
Orleans, a laid back Louisianan city, like people elsewhere, took neither the hurricane prediction nor the
word of the city mayor very seriously, which led to the vastly infamous and large-scale devastation.
Disbelief over superficially unimportant issues like weather, when aggregated over time, leads to
skepticism about something as major as an all-engulfing hurricane. This, in today’s day and age, is a very
challenging problem to resolve. This is due to the culmination of years of, for lack of a better word,
sloppy priorities for evaluating forecasts. Forecasters belonging to most walks, are judged harsher over
their skills of presentation and precision than accuracy and honesty. Though precision ostensibly looks
like a highly sophisticated metric for the quality of a forecast, it often is bought at the price of accuracy.
Precision should be used as a tool to adjudge the accuracy and confidence of a forecast, not the result of
the forecast itself. Rampant misuse of precision and over-confidence in one’s predictions leads to the
mass delusion of futility of the very exercise. For example, if weather forecasters are made to compete
with climatologists over defending the precision of their estimate, objectively, they would lose more
often than not. This wouldn’t make for a very convincing (read profitable) weather forecast show. It thus
paves way for a discomfiting circular logic. Weathermen are not looking to hire overtly accurate weather
forecasters because people have relatively lower confidence in TV weather forecasts anyway; people
have little confidence in TV weather forecasts because they are not accurate most of the time. Similarly,
traffic forecasts are used more as a tool for validating the personal benefits of pre-decided policies,
rather than as a tool to objectively influence the decision-making process. Also, if the estimates made by
forecasting pundits are presented in the form of a range than exact numbers, it would imply that policy
makers (who, in this case, are evacuators and other disaster management personnel) have to formulate
solutions and prepare for more than one scenario. In some contexts, they might even be expected to
brace for more than a finite number of setups. In a world used to drawing distinct borderlines between
abstract events, this becomes an uncomfortable predicament. The cost of addressing this hardship was
paid by those trapped in the hurricane.

In the chapter, “A Catastrophic Failure of Prediction”, Nate Silver outlines the series of events
which led to the disreputable economic crisis of 2008. Housing, which since the very advent of the
science of analyzing macroeconomic influence of different market commodities, was never chalked up
to be a particularly lucrative investment. This directly transcribes its decidedly safe nature. The question
which should have been asked, but no one did, was “Really how safe is safe?”. Credit rating agencies
exist to answer precisely this question. Their sole purpose is to quantify the riskiness of investments
(and mortgages). The process of answering this question is clearly not as straightforward as one, or in
hindsight, the rating agencies might have hoped. The very intricate route to reach a conclusive answer
to this question was conveniently ignored by the risk rating agencies as a result of the inherently “safe”
nature of housing investments. Proprietors of this type of investments are generally considered law-
abiding, high income citizens, and their credit-worthiness was believed to be solely a factor of
outrageously under-researched and over-simplified ingredients like geographical location and income
(for example, a software scion in Silicon Valley versus a damp shack dweller in Arkansas). Preposterously
large and protracted ranges of credit-worthiness scores were abridged into rating ranges as a result of
this faux pas. That neither investors, nor rating agencies questioned the quantitative nature of the bond
ratings is egregious and that it happened because even a confidence score of 99% has a 1% chance of
failing is a very flimsy line of defense indeed. It has been conclusively proven through numeric
simulations, distributional graphics, and highly sophisticated multi-dimensional computations, that given
a sufficiently large dataset, a 1% risk is indeed transformed into a 100 in 10000 statistic. If historical data
is used to diagnose the validity of a statistical model, the given rate of risk is inbuilt. That is to say that if
the forecaster has a history of successful predictions over a statistically significant period of time as well
as an adequately large dataset, the risk percent is a known and quotable statistic. It should be noted
that underestimation of risk in such magnanimously high stake markets is seldom a result of sampling
biases and errors. It is instead, as Dean Baker said, ‘baked into the system’. It is usually a result of a
faulty statistical model fueled with defective and incorrectly hypothesized assumptions. This gives the
entire spectacle a wildly criminal undertone. The inviolable nature of this mortgage market did not invite
a lot of investigative probing, which led to its slow but exponential rise in attracting colossal amounts of
investments, hedge funds, speculation bets and the likes of it. Its share of fixed assets in the economy
rose so much so that it became one of the major drivers of the economy.

The algorithmic structure of assigning the ratings to pools of mortgages to “bet” on reveals the expected
percent default within each pool of investments. Assumptions are then made as to which pool of risk
each combination of mortgages belong to. What the rating agencies failed to take into consideration
was a very obviously delineable and existing connection between seemingly unrelated housing
mortgages (and consequently their default rates): the skyrocketing prices of houses with no significant
rise in incomes, essentially, what we call a Bubble. The money spent on buying these houses, instead of
having a market currency value, was reduced to mere numbers further fueled by the constantly
increasing number of nonpayers. Another argument for an apparently unaccounted for noise (error)
hauntingly converting the 1% risk into a glaring reality could be the possible absence of context-specific
evidence which could not have alerted any active seekers to address the inherent risk. This is not unlike
how a driver with an untarnished, three-decade old driving record is unequipped with any evidence to
adjudge how safely he might drive drunk after a party one night. But this situation was not applicable in
case of the housing bubble fiasco. This is because despite having a precedence of two other similar
housing bubbles almost 50 years ago, the first in USA, and another eerily similar case in Japan, the rise of
this flourishing market continued without any checks. Partly to blame was the investors’ proclivity to the
optimistic aversion from inspecting the number of defaulters within this market which prevented private
rating agencies from performing basic legal quality assurance requisites. Most investment combinations
that used to be remotely composed of housing mortgages and/or related to the housing sector was
automatically given the highest (signifying the safest) rating (AAA). Any attempt at investigating the
underlying cause of the increasingly prevalent AAA bonds in the market was either disregarded,
discouraged or simply quelled with an air of poised incredulity.

After having established the necessity of paying ample attention to the often unnoticed but context-
sensitive factors lurking in a dataset, one should also consider dividing the data into the appropriate
resolution to make the forecast practical and avoid over-generalization of the derived results. Silver
addresses this in the chapter “For Years You’ve Been Telling Us That Rain is Green”. The failure to first
conclusively envisage the hurricane Katrina, and then effectively communicating the necessity of
evacuating New Orleans left thousands dead and many more devastated. Factors like consumer/client
interest in the interpretability of the forecast, impact of the decision relating to the forecast,
competition in a race to throw out the most popular and easily inferred forecast, all affect the methods
and effort which go into forecasting. Recognizing that pooling a lot of data together would only
gradually give way to chaos taking over is crucial to avoid overly generalized solutions to complex
research questions. In many cases, this might even lead to incorrectly classifying data into categories
which are unsuitable given their number of dimensions. Transportation systems and factors leading to
any major change in the demand for traffic facilities are symbolized by utility functions which are
dynamic in nature, ever changing and sensitive to changes. These changes might not be completely
intuitive, and can evade from notice now, more than ever, given the vast amount of data modern day
researchers have access to. Chaos theory also points out the non-linear nature of these systems
meaning that they might be exponentially affecting some component of the utility function. Advanced
computational facilities these days enable forecasters to speed up multi-dimensional calculations, a skill
which is only useful if applied in a carefully designed, context-specific manner.

Another factor of importance is translation of data. In the field of forecasting, or in this case, in the field
of traffic demand forecasting, translation of data and results sourced from a different point in space and
time plays a pivotal role in affecting the final inference derived from the data base. Silver, in the chapter
“All I Care About is W’s and L’s” of his book, mentions Baseball Prospectus which enumerates statistics
related to baseball players, both major and minor league. Numbers corresponding to the minor league
players are skillfully standardized to make them comparable to those corresponding to the major league
players. Results often sourced from analyses, studies and predictions carried out in conditions unrelated
to the context within examination created a bias in our method of forecast. On one hand, it is important
to keep track of the advancements in forecasting methodologies elsewhere and incorporating these
approaches with suitable caution to our own circumstances, it is also essential to learn to segregate such
results and avoid them from introducing unnecessary noise and prejudice in our own calculations. Some
events are plain random; a consequence of belonging to a larger, more untamed set of disconnected
data, and are capable of causing significant kinks in our prediction results. A number of factors
differentiate major and minor league players from each other, for example, size of field, frequency of
games, etc. It is therefore imperative that wins and losses from each category of the game be
normalized to make an “equal-ground” comparison between them. In a game like baseball, which is
often played in fields of non-standard dimensions, it is essential that such calibrations be made not only
between major and minor leagues, but often even between games belonging to the same league
categories. How this extends to forecasts related to transportation and traffic demands is that methods
and forecasts which have been historically proven to be correct may not necessarily work in a different
setting, a different time period, or even a different demographic group. Baseball Prospectus, for
instance, used ‘Park Scores’ to evaluate and homogenize scores sourced from games played in each
park. Similar empirical studies need to be carried out when calculating demand within a certain
environment composed of different temporal, spatial and heuristic elements like social groups
inhabiting an area, recognizing the key demographic which is expected to use a certain transportation
facility, number of years the forecast is being calculated for, mode for which the transport demand
model is being calculated for, etc. These scores should then be factored in the analysis with appropriate
consideration when forecasting demand for the respective conditions.

Traffic forecasts essentially play the role of rating agencies in a world composed of federal and state
departments of transportation, private construction contractors, political policy makers, urban planners,
etc. To account for the numerous influential nuances embedded in the socioeconomic and temporal
data driving transportation forecast models, it is vital that context-sensitive methodologies be adopted.
If forecasting ethics are isolated from political uses of transportation model forecast results, arriving at
objective predictions based solely on available data, particularly in developed countries like the USA
seems to be a viable and practical endeavor. However, the presence and interests of major stakeholders
govern such forecasts. Analysts, in such cases, are expected to devote more time in coming up with
technically sound defense arguments justifying a set of predetermined outcomes than ensuring the
accuracy of the forecast itself. Resource allocation to various transportation projects benefits a number
of sections of the society. Although there may be grounds of rationalizing such benefits from a political
perspective, the purpose of forecasting traffic demand should not, in strict terms, be regulated by such
extenuating validations. On occasions, forecast specialists employed in firms tweak certain assumptions
to which the results of the forecast inherently adhere to for fulfilling self-serving purposes: for instance,
in order to rake in subsequent contracts, the existence of which is tied to the necessity of the initial step
being projected indispensable. As forecasts are, by definition, unverifiable if the underlying assumptions
are somehow warranted, they are basically used as a primary obligatory step instead of a decision which
fundamentally drives the decision making procedure [1]. The rampant abuse of estimation
methodologies has made people cynical towards the very necessity of this procedure. As a result, policy
makers may soon advocate the removal of this step in its entirety instead of making the process
transparent and accessible to the public. This would crown into the blatant abuse of political mandate
and stakeholders will solely be responsible for authenticating the requirement of any future public
project. Thus, resolutions to address this are need of the hour. As suggested by Wach (1990), aware and
educated masses well-equipped to question the authenticity and accuracy of the forecast results will
provide a greater impetus to forecasting agencies as well as political and entrepreneurial stakeholders to
function more honorably. Also, conceiving and acknowledging the ambiguity in the forecasters’ code of
ethics and professional practices would go a long way in addressing the dilemma forecasting personnel
experience in the face of being honor bound to serve their employer as well as being true to
professional integrity. Hartgen (2013) explores the techniques European and Australian forecasters use
to address the uncertainties in the values of the variables shaping their transportation model
predictions. Uncertainty logs are developed to quantify the indecisions associated with the values of
each randomly distributed variable. These quantitative measures are then classified into ranks (like the
rating agencies did with the risk associated with each bond). A list of decisions linked with each of these
ranks serves as an advisory tool to make decisions about the practicality and necessity of the project
being undertaken. The risk-based decision module follows a rubric which lists various recommendations
so as to facilitate the decision making process, for example, if a specific project could be undertaken by
tweaking the policies, or changing the size and scale of construction, etc. Hartgen points out the
necessity of calling out the ethical concerns related to forecasting practices instead of fixating solely
upon modifying the underlying structure of the forecasting methodologies from modal to topical. Like
Silver, he also suggests presenting the result of travel demand models being presented in a probabilistic
form and/or ranges of possible scenarios rather than mere numbers. He notes that this will increase the
quality of these forecasts in terms of accuracy, as well as preparedness on the part of the contractors.
He has formulated a rubric for assisting the process of identifying inaccuracies in the forecast results
which can be used by almost every hierarchy of the stakeholders- public, journalists, political
beneficiaries, contractors, engineers as well as analysts. Unrealistic and unverified assumptions often
are the most serious perpetrators of spitting out a glaringly flawed forecast. The validity of these
assumptions should not be based purely on their justifiability. In an uncertain socioeconomic paradigm,
which exists for any forecast made for a time period 20 years into the future, any assumption can be
ascertained citing the vast cloud of improbability. These assumptions simply serve as a computational
convenience and should be treated as such.

Using untested methodological advancements in the field of travel demand modelling forecasts, without
carrying out sufficient reliability tests exclusive to the context of the forecast should be discouraged.
Care should be taken to make sufficient corrections for temporal bias and sampling errors in the traffic
behavior data when using the four step model as the data and assumptions related to travel behavior is
obtained from different spatial points across an area, but not necessarily from different points in time.
Overfitting the data, as both Hartgen and Silver pointed out, is another major but tremendously
commonplace misapplication of statistical models. Overfitting creates early breeding grounds for
insinuating bogus relationships within variables in a database. One might think that such spurious
relationships could be easily spotted and expelled from the model results but in reality, it is not as
straightforward as that. Real world data is much more amorphous and noisy to enable spotting a visibly
conspicuous relationship. In fact, some of these spurious correlations may in fact not be intuitively as
apocryphal at all. Silver quotes the winner of the Super Bowl being considered a major predictor for the
development of the economy for the better part of 1990’s. The hypothesis had excellent R-squared and
P-values. The model even performed well in “predicting” the GDP growth for a few years before starting
to fail and being called out for its co-incidental and correlation-without-causation nature. Theoretically,
the probability of the relationship being merely due to chance was less than 1 in 4700000. What is
interesting is that these figures could as easily be generated by fitting a model of chicken production in
Uganda and the economy of USA (this effect is more commonly known as the Butterfly effect). Similar is
the effect of personal biases introduced during sampling or modelling by the analyst producing
intuitionally sound forecasts. Utmost care should therefore be taken to ensure the comprehensiveness
of an analysis, and explicit post-hoc diagnostics should be encouraged to minimize the risk of ending up
with a contrived forecast. This again fortifies the necessity of reporting results accompanied by their
respective margins of error.

Zhang et al. (2012) in their study about peak temporal traffic trend forecasting, compared different non-
parametric models to arrive at the most effective and least computationally intensive method to provide
real time peak hour traffic forecasts using historic peak time traffic data [2]. It should be noted that even
for models employing non parametric methods (in this case, Least Square Support Vector Machines) to
analyze large time series data sets, there is considerable noise on days displaying more haphazard peak
hour traffic (Thursdays, for instance). Historic data too fails to predict with significant accuracy the real
time traffic data to be expected during these hours. This is reminiscent of the erratic weather forecasts
made 10 days earlier to the target date that Silver mentioned in the chapter “All I Care About Is Wins
and Losses”. Forecasts made ten days prior to the target date and promptly rolled out through savvy
interfaces were based mostly on moving averages of historic weather data. Hardly any refined analysis
actually went into the calculations leading to these forecasts. The forecasters hardly have any faith in
these numbers. More often than not, these numbers fail to resemble the more cogently forecasted
predictions (based on climatic and temporal data, often within a week of the target date) but perchance
do seem intuitive to the actual weather encountered on the target dates.

Building on that premise, in a race to make forecasts appear more precise and larger than life than they
really are, individuals or agencies often try to distract an observer away from the number of times the
prediction failed. The fail percentage, or ‘risk’, associated with a forecast is as important as the accuracy,
result and the confidence level of the forecast itself. Selective reporting of results is fundamentally
unethical. But when the stakes are not too high, for example a TV show prophesying election results, or
when a forecaster is instructed to mold his/her predictions to fit a specific frame, failed predictions are
hardly ever discussed. It should be noted that a lot of such discussions, like the TV panel anticipating
election results in weeks leading up to the final election day are substantially a form of feedback data as
opposed to the mere critique analysis they usually guise themselves in. Many of these ‘analyses’ have
stark underlying flaws in them, like using small sample sizes, evidence opposing their hypotheses
conveniently being overlooked, etc. While some of these predictions have to be right only once for their
predictor to be regarded as a highly gifted political analyst, many of these experts have made multiple,
often blatantly contrasting, claims based on incidental evidences. But this elitist stance may not work
entirely in the favor of political scientists either. What it depends upon is whether their forecasting
approach is based on pools of contingent data or do they follow a one size fits all methodology to arrive
at their conclusion. Sometimes, information obtained from diverse and unrelated strands are woven
together by keen observers to predict certain outcomes. A trite example for this supposition would be
the failure of many a political scientist to predict the collapse of USSR. The dissimilar pools of data (in
this case, news) were not even contrary to each other that they would have instigated two opposing
schools of political prediction pedagogy. Instead, people who predicted the demise of the union merely
fortified their conclusion by assimilating the data gathered from these multiple sources. As mentioned in
the chapter “Are You Smarter than a TV Pundit” (a pun on the popular TV show, “Are You Smarter than a
Fifth Grader”, cleverly sneering the likes of McLaughlin) by Silver, “fox like” forecasters, who are scrappy
about locating information and interlacing them together to form a comprehensive story usually have a
higher success rate when it comes to prediction. In spite of this, their predictions hardly make the
headlines, probably due to the absence of an overbearing cockiness about their predictions. Also, their
predictions are typically based on unintuitive bits of information strewn together, often culminating into
inexplicable and far too complicated empirical derivations. An average reader or viewer does not have
the patience nor acumen to try to sift through the humdrum of proofs therein. These people also do not
characteristically make particularly charming TV show guests. The roster of clues they have to offer
incorporate ideas from multidisciplinary sources, their statistical models are highly sensitive to new
pieces of information and due to these reasons, they are far too cautious about their predictions. Their
predictions also frequently fail to resolve a lot of seemingly related surrogate questions mostly due to
the reason that these questions are just that to them: unresolvable, given the current set of data.

Another category of forecasters, that is, “Hedgehogs” to quote the famous UC Berkeley psychiatrist Dr.
Tetlock, are what you and I would call the “Alpha” forecasters. They are dedicated analysts, often
trained to offer predictions based on tested theories. Additionally, they are mostly career forecasters
who deal with limited areas within forecasting (in extension, this type of personality is often found
frequenting within professional urban planners, who are exclusively trained to function within specific
fiduciaries). People with such highly devoted expertise often belittle outsiders’ opinions, ultimately
rejecting a probable pool of additional information a keen, scrappy fox might have gathered and to
offer. In such cases, traces of new data is not viewed as a potential resource to change the pre-existing
theories or statistical model, but to refine the current (actually, age old and time tested) model. This
often leads them to ignoring crucial changes of the current time and day which might lead to what Silver
earlier referred to as a catastrophical failure of prediction. Acknowledging the chaos within the
predicting variables is the first step towards attempting to evaluate it and “hedgehogs” are very
reluctant to embrace the anarchy within their analytical turf. The exceedingly imposing inferences made
by “hedgehogs” in their predictions make for excellent TV guests; they exude the sort of confidence
which accompanies precise forecasts, irrespective of accuracy.

Instinctively, the secret to develop oneself into a better forecaster clearly lies in being ‘foxy’. What this
means, implores Silver candidly, is to assess probabilities instead of figures. This means, that in many
cases, the evaluator might be left with a range of outcomes as wide as almost half of all possible results.
A ‘hedgehog’ might argue that this is a pre-conceived excuse to corroborate the failure of one’s
predictions. What they will most likely fail to take into account is that this range will prevent a forecaster
from quoting a figure as absurdly off the mark as predicting that Republicans would win 100 seats within
the Electoral College in the 2010 presidential elections when it won 63. This is because individual P-
values pertaining to singular value for the dependent variable are often misleading when a statistical
model is not corrected for selectivity bias, random variable biases and unidentified panels in the data.
On the other hand, the likelihood of a range of values within a reasonably defined confidence interval
being as preposterously faulty as the one mentioned above is meagre (in which case, there either exists
a capital flaw in the methodology of the model forecast, or the number of unidentified lurking variables
is too large to be accounted for). This is because the combined likelihood of a range of values, even after
being conservatively corrected for multiple comparisons and post-hoc analysis, will hardly administer a
misleading prediction, even if it is not aggressively precise. Although, the results from this foxy
mechanism of forecasting are useful and even applicable to real life problems spread over a longer
period of time and a sufficiently large dataset, it might be impractical and, to some extent, cumbersome
to substantiate the results spewed by a range of possible outcomes. When lives are not at stake, a more
conservative or ‘hedgehog’ way of working might be vouched for given ample empirical evidence to
prove its veracity. But as extensively as practical, the consumer(s) should espouse their faith in the more
soundly principled probabilistic prediction to avoid making high stake blunders in attenuating
circumstances like threat to life (field of medicine) or the economy.

Khaled et al. (2003) addressed the issues surrounding lack of credible data sources in developing
countries and its impact on traffic forecasting, and consequently on the lack of resources to conduct cost
benefit studies corresponding to numerous land-use and urban planning projects [3]. This, coupled with
the high urban population densities, underdeveloped roadway facilities for non-motorized vehicles, high
crash and traffic fatality rates, degrading environmental conditions and saturated conditions of traffic
operations in developing countries, expounds the scope of financial losses if an unplanned and poorly
analyzed transportation project is undertaken. Moreover, with continually rising incomes the need of a
thoroughly planned infrastructure and traffic management system is becoming the need of the hour.
The four step method of urban planning, essentially developed for first world countries is ineffective and
trite way to address the entirely different heuristics of developing nations. The trip generation method
of the four step model requires socioeconomic data which predicts the demand for transportation
facilities while there is no consideration for quantitative metrics like travel time and roadway capacity
which are subject to highly distinct and discernible differences in developing countries depending upon a
number of traffic interruptive influences. Also, the population and land use patterns change more
rapidly in a developing economy than that in developed countries, making predictions well into the
future (usually necessities and magnitude regarding transportation facilities are made twenty years into
the future) subject to a variety of unknowns. To counter this, Khaled et al. suggested modelling the
respective urban network into the TransCAD software, superimposing demographic and land use data
from a GIS shapefile, and creating skim matrices of the origin-destination pairs thus generated. The
utility functions to be used in distributing the trips and factoring the mode splits would be generated by
an empirical expression, the summation of the individual products of trips T and a proportion P
determined by the stochastic nature of the destination. The stochastic nature of the proportion variable
is due to estimating traffic from new generators, varying land use patterns and changing demographic
statistics of the region in question.

While Khaled et al. investigated the experiential relationships between transportation-demand

modelling in developing countries; Naess et al. (2014) examined sources and causes of forecasting
inaccuracies in transportation modelling in Scandinavian countries [4]. They have analyzed and
quantified errors arising from a number of methodical errors while statistically calculating future travel
demand models. Survey data was used to explore extant practices in the field of transportation
forecasting. Insights were sought within this data to identify underlying sources through which common
inaccuracies like optimism bias, strategic misrepresentation, sampling errors, etc. could creep into the
model. In order to avoid generalizing the results obtained from this study, it should be noted that the
region addressed in this study, namely Scandinavia, is a developed economy. It exists at its peak of
socioeconomic prosperity and possesses highly advanced systems of traffic system and transportation
facilities. Additionally, the traffic forecasting agencies are institutionalized to most extent, meaning that
there lies certain uniformity between how these forecasting agencies within the same department
operate. Overestimation of future traffic demand was found to be a major issue in most European
countries. This is widely referred to as Optimism Bias. Optimism bias also includes the underestimation
of construction costs. This combination of issues is a common occurrence, which was also scrutinized by
Hartgen and Wach in their papers critiquing prevailing transportation forecasting techniques and ethics
[5]. Other insights which could be drawn from the Scandinavian questionnaires were that most of their
forecasting agencies almost unanimously agreed that ontological explanations like delays in
construction, unpredictable land use development and development of some unforeseen transportation
infrastructure lurked behind failed predictions of traffic demand models. That unexpected and
unpredictable geopolitical trajectories and vastly different vested interests of political and business
groups were responsible for the uncertainties in the predictive models and significantly accurate
predictions could not be made for demand models as far as 10 years into the future based on the data
we have access to today. Interestingly, there is hardly any mention of probabilistic values and/or ranges
of predicted values for the demand models which might prove useful in explaining their undisputed
distrust in predictive models.