Mining the past to determine the future: Problems and possibilities

Technological advances mean that vast data sets are increasingly common. Such data sets provide us with unparallelled opportunities for modelling and predicting the likely outcome of future events. However, such data sets may also bring with them new challenges and difficulties. An awareness of these, and of the weaknesses as well as the possibilities of these large data sets, is necessary if useful forecasts are to be made. This paper looks at some of these difficulties, using illustrations with applications from various areas.