This is my final article for this year. It’s hard to imagine that it’s almost 2014, and yet I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found myself in the following situation: I meet someone at a tradeshow, they ask me what we do, and I say: “Predictive Analytics for Retailers”, they nod their head and say: “Oh yea! Forecasting, yup, we do that!” I smile politely and then begin breaking down why Predictive Analytics is not just a fancy word for Forecasting. Not even close. In the past few decades statistical forecasting has been applied in many