Trend Analysis as Pattern Recognition

Millett Stephen M. Honton Edward J. , A Manager's Guide to Technology Forecasting and Strategy Analysis Methods. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press, 1991, pp. 1–42

See Khaldun Ibn , The Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History. Edited and abridged by Dawood N. J. . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981 (1967); Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950; and Robert L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers. New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1999 (1953)

Darwin Charles , The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1965 (1872)

For example, see Jung C. G. , Psychological Reflections. Selections edited by Jacobi Jolande . New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961 (1953). Joseph Campbell, to cite but one famous example, leveraged the Jungian concept of archetypes to classify myths and legends, and the historical patterns behind them, in the behavior of leaders across history in The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972 (1949)

I thank my former colleagues at the resident School of Engineering, Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) and the Battelle Memorial Institute for instructing me in the technical basics of pattern recognition. Much has already been published in this field. For example, see Duda Richard O. Hart Peter E. Stock David G. , Pattern Classification. Second edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001. Also check out the Web site of the International Association for Pattern Recognition, www.iapr.org. An example of trends analysis used for pattern recognition in consumer behavior may be found in Stephen M. Millett, “Futuring: Anticipating the Emerging Voice of the Customer,” in Deborah L. Owens and Douglas R. Hausknecht , eds., Integrated Marketing Communication. Volume 4 of Marketing in the 21st Century (Bruce D. Keillor, General Editor). Westport, CN: Praeger, 2007, pp. 62–81

Malakoff David , “Bayes Offers a ‘New’ Way to Make Sense of Numbers,” Science, Vol. 286, 19, November 1999, pp. 1460–1464; Hillary L. Seal, “Thomas Bayes” and Harry V. Roberts, “Bayesian Inference” in David L. Sills, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan and The Free Press, 1968, Vol. 2, pp. 26–33. For discussions on human perceptions of time by two different Harvard University psychologists, see Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness. New York: Vintage Books, 2006;, and Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought. Language as a Window into Human Nature. New York: Viking, 2007

Braudel Fernand , The Structures of Everyday Life. The Limits of the Possible. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992 (1979). For his philosophy of long-term historical trends and the basic stability of human life in civilization, see his A History of Civilizations. New York: Penguin Books, 1995 (1963)

Thoreau Henry David , Walden and Other Writings. Edited by Atkinson Brooks . New York: The Modern Library, 2000, p. 303

For example, see Taleb Nassim Nicholas , The Black Swan. The Impact of the Highly Improbable. New York: Random House, 2007

Hume David , A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by Mossner Ernest C. . London: Penguin Classics, 1985 (1739–1740), pp. 135–142, 152, 179, 183, 184, 189, and 192. Hume's 18th century philosophical observations on the human perceptions of cause-and-effect relations and trend projections over time were largely confirmed by a 21st century evolutionary psychologist. See Pinker, The Stuff of Thought, pp. 157, 208–225

Popper Karl , The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Routledge Classics, 2003 (1935)

What I say here sounds a lot like the systems dynamics of Jay Forrester and the work of Peter Senge at MIT. For example, see Senge Peter M. , The Fifth Discipline. The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Currency/Doubleday, 2006 (1990). It also sounds like the intuitive scenario method as developed by Shell, SRI International, and GBN. See Stephen M. Millett, “The future of scenarios: challenges and opportunities,” Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 31, No. 2 (2003), pp. 16–24, and Bill Ralston and Ian Wilson, The Scenario Planning Handbook. Mason, OH: Thomson South-Western, 2006. What I am specifically referring to is a scenario method developed by the Battelle Memorial Institute called BASICS and Interactive Future Simulations (IFS)™. It is a method with a supporting software program that incorporates expert judgment for selecting the most important descriptors, cross-impact analysis and modeling, Bayesian probabilities, and simulation

Frost Robert , “Education by Poetry. A Meditative Monologue” November 15, 1930, in Robert Frost. Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays. New York: Library Classics of America, 1995, p. 723

May Ernest R. , “Lessons” of the Past. The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973; and Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time. The Uses of History for Decision Makers. New York: The Free Press, 1988 (1986)