Predicting the Future

Wouldn’t you love to be able to predict the future? Wouldn’t it be good to know what’s coming next or to have a jump start on everyone else and secure a place in history like Nostradamus? Since time immemorial there have been people who have claimed to have a ‘gift’ to foresee the future. Sometimes these people have been true visionaries, like the great 15th century painter, inventor, sculptor, naturalist and scientist, Leonardo da Vinci, while others have been nothing short of charlatans, like the infamous, Rasputin.

Predicting the future can be a perilous pastime. Take for instance, the famous ‘last words’ of Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, who in 1943 said:
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Or the quote from Bill Gates who said of the computer:
“640k ought to be enough for anybody.”

Weather prediction is one of those fundamentals, which despite the best efforts of meteorologists, satellite tracking and computer modelling, still defies accurate predictions. Many is the time that the so called experts get it wrong. I was reading a book recently which tells the story of how there was a world wide competition to see who had developed the best and most successful computer program to accurately predict the weather. They received dozens of entries in the competition, with everything from sophisticated weather pattern modelling to complicated computer software programs with thousands of lines of code which required supercomputers to run all of the calculations.

Each day, the competing models were required to make predictions as to what the weather conditions would be on the next day in thirty different cities across America. After six months, the results were tallied to see which program was the most accurate. Guess what won? It was a simple one line code that had the following words: “Tomorrow’s weather will be the same as today’s weather.”

If you think about it, weather often changes gradually and so there is a very strong possibility that the next day’s weather will be exactly the same as today’s weather. Sure it’s not sophisticated but the odds are that more often than not, the weather will be the same. Of course there are major weather events and abnormalities that are difficult to explain with such a simplistic model, but it’s not a bad method and it’s certainly a lot cheaper than satellites and computer modelling. Long range weather forecasters use the data from the weather records kept for over a hundred years to make predictions about the future weather patterns, with surprising accuracy.

Even animals have the ability to predict and know what’s coming in the natural world. Many animals have an innate sense of impending natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis or severe storms. Immediately before major earthquakes, animals have been observed to take on very strange behaviours (jumping vertically) and trying to escape the local region; before major storms and tsunamis, birds fly away and animals disappear to higher ground and most of us have observed how ants come indoors en masse just before severe rain depressions.

What can we conclude from all of this seemingly unrelated information about making predictions for the future? Much of what we can predict can be deduced from the status quo, or from our current observations or pattern of behaviour. What are the implications of this? For all of us, we need only look at what we do and say today to have some sense of what the future has in store for us. I know we don’t have the power to know with any certainty what other events will happen in our lives but in terms of our own destiny, ‘the writing is on the wall’.

For students it is very straightforward, if they are to succeed in their studies (or sport or music or anything for that matter) they need to commit now. The foundation for future success lies in the groundwork that you do today. The prediction of potential success may not be as much a mystery as we think. There are many people who argue that life becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you work consistently towards a goal then chances are that you will succeed in this. If you are half hearted and doubt your own ability well then chances are that you won’t be successful.

Whether it’s in a study program or application in class, the best predictor of future success is success today. Even the universities recognise this and after years of high drop out rates in first year university, they’ve found that those students who can successfully complete a unit or two of a particular university course in Year 12, are more likely to succeed in that course when they commence full time university study. At CCS we give all students in Years 11 and 12 the opportunity to commence university study or vocational education Certificates II, III, or IV.

Often the students who have the highest results at the end of Year 12 are not necessarily the most intelligent students – these students certainly have an advantage – but the students who achieve the best results are the ones who do the hard work day in day out, in class and at home. They are students who ask lots of questions of their teachers. They are the students who have a well planned and well organised study program and forward planning process in place for assignments and upcoming assessment. It takes time and commitment to succeed. As Beverly Sills, famous American operatic soprano once flippantly commented:
“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”