Spyros Makridakis

Spyros Makridakis (born 22 April 1941) is a professor at the University of Nicosia where he is the Director of the Institute for the Future (IFF) and an Emeritus Professor of Decision Sciences at INSEAD as well as the University of Piraeus and one of the world's leading experts on forecasting, with many journal articles and books on the subject. He is famous as the organizer of the Makridakis Competitions, known in the forecasting literature as the M-Competitions.

Biography Makridakis was part of the Greek Sailing Team in the 1960 Olympic Games and studied at the Graduate School of Industrial Studies in Piraeus (University of Piraeus, present name). After that, he joined New York University where he obtained a Ph.D. in 1969. This was followed with publication of results from three Makridakis Competitions: the M-competition in 1982, the M-2 competition in 1993, and the M-3 competition in 2000.

Books and popular articles

Professor Makridakis has authored, or co-authored, twenty-seven books and more than 360 articles. His book Forecasting Methods for Management, 5th ed. (Wiley) has been translated in twelve languages and sold more than 120,000 copies while his book Forecasting: Methods and Applications, 3rd ed. (Wiley) has been a widely used textbook in the forecasting field with more than 5,300 citations. Professor Makridakis was the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting and is the organizer of the M (Makridakis) Competitions. His article "Statistical and Machine Learning Forecasting Methods: Concerns and ways forwards" has been viewed/downloaded more than 123,000 times in PLOS ONE where it was published in March 2018 while his paper "The forthcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution: Its impact on society and firms" (Futures, March 2017) is the most downloaded one of the journal: Forecasting: Methods and Applications (3rd Edition) with Steven C. Wheelwright and Rob J. Hyndman (1983) Forecasting, Planning and Strategies for the 21st Century (1990) and Forecasting Methods for Management with Steve Wheelright (1990) that has been translated in twelve languages and has sold more than 120,000 copies. Makridakis, Hogarth, and Gaba (authors of the Dance with Chance book) also co-authored an article for the Winter 2010 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.