Consensus forecast

Futures studies
Concepts
Accelerating change Cashless society Existential risk Future Earth Mathematics Race Climate Space exploration Universe Historical materialism Kondratiev cycle Kardashev scale Moore's law Peak oil Population cycle Resource depletion Singularity Swanson's law
Techniques
Backcasting Causal layered analysis Chain-linked model Consensus forecast Cross impact analysis Delphi Real-time Delphi Foresight Future-proof Futures wheel Futures workshops Horizon scanning Reference class forecasting Scenario planning Systems analysis Threatcasting Trend analysis
Technology assessment and forecasting
Critical design Design fiction Exploratory engineering FTA Hype cycle Science fiction prototyping Speculative design TRL Technology scouting
v t e

A consensus forecast is a prediction of the future created by combining several separate forecasts which have often been created using different methodologies. They are used in a number of sciences, ranging from econometrics to meteorology, and are also known as combining forecasts, forecast averaging or model averaging (in econometrics and statistics) and committee machines, ensemble averaging or expert aggregation (in machine learning).

Applications can range from forecasting the weather to predicting the annual Gross Domestic Product of a country or the number of cars a company or an individual dealer is likely to sell in a year. While forecasts are often made for future values of a time series, they can also be for one-off events such as the outcome of a presidential election or a football match.