Prediction

[Øgland - Petter <petter.ogland@skatteetaten.no>]

Jeff Hawkins, in "On Intelligence" (Times Books: New York, 2004), says that
the brain functions according to the memory-prediction-system, i.e. that
intelligence more or less boils down to updating a predictive model of the
world.  As far as I can see, this is the C.I. Lewis epistemology that
Shewhart and Deming based their philosophy upon.

The prediction Deming seems to be doing, however, are based on using SPC to
monitor whether stationary stochastic processes are stable or not.  Surely
he must mean something more than this when he talks about prediction.
Monitoring is not prediction, as far as I can see, and only few problems can
be monitored as stationary stochastic processes.

For some problems I use least squares methods (regression analysis) for
prediction and then SPC for monitoring the residuals.  Surely we are not
using regression analysis in out brains 24/7, but is there any kind of
operational definition for 'prediction' that would explain what Deming means
when he uses this word in various contexts?

Petter