Ali wrote: >let me say quickly if anyone wants to fight for
reliable data they are fighting for a lost cause. i
have seen statiticianswho could not calculate growth
rates and i am in it so this is a foirst hand report
if you know what i mean <
supposedly, years ago a herd of Harvard economists flew into some African country to
do a
policy evaluation. Part of this was to produce economic forecasts, based on the paltry
and
incomplete data that the country had.
Years later, one of the economists (who didn't really know much about the country in
question, since it wasn't his specialty) looked at the national income and product
accounts of the country and was surprised: his group's forecasts had turned out to be
totally accurate!
It turned out that the country's central bank had used the forecasts to represent
reality,
since "it was the best data available."
Is this story true?
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