Several times in the last few days I have used the following phrase in presentations to officials and business leaders
My baseline is __________ but I expect surprises to be to the upside
Now, I suppose I could weave some complex distributional argument where this statement made sense. In truth, I used it without thinking, because its how other folks talk.
The most commonsense explanation for the odd “expectation of surprises” is that this is another way of saying “I am lying to you.”
Indeed, I am lying. Convention dictates that at this point in the cycle I predict medium-high growth in most measures that people are interested in.
That is not, however, what I actually believe. I believe that some of these measures will show very high growth. Yet, rather than coming out and saying that , I say “but I expect surprises to be to the upside.”
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Friday ~ February 11th, 2011 at 10:21 am
Doug Bonar
To me that phrase suggests poorly founded optimism, but it doesn’t strike me as nonsensical or an indication of lying.
There are lots of cases where we need to give an estimate, and know we won’t get it right. Surprises will come up. It makes sense to try to put as much correction as you can into the estimate, and then tell people whether your estimate was optimistic or pessimistic, i.e. which way you expect to be wrong.