Brexit must be a gift to forecasters
For the next year, they've got a simple go-to excuse for why nothing has worked out the way they said it would.
Tech spending forecasters at Gartner are all in a tizzy – Brexit and currency fluctuations are both to blame. At the start of this year, the crystal ball stroker estimated the industry would grow 0.5 per cent in 2016, then flip flopped and reduced this prediction by a full percentage point to $3.49 trillion, blaming the …
For the next year, they've got a simple go-to excuse for why nothing has worked out the way they said it would.
"At the start of this year, the crystal ball stroker estimated the industry would grow 0.5 per cent in 2016, then flip flopped and reduced this prediction by a full percentage point to $3.49 trillion, blaming the negative affect of forex rates."
That's exactly what I would expect to read in an article anywhere else. Meaningless comparisons between numbers and values that have no immediate significance or relation. It's what everyone does, so nobody gets any blame for bad reporting.
If you start giving out figures in percentages, keep with percentages. No reader can possibly understand what $3.49 trillion is compared to 0.5%, so spell it out when you do things like that. Give us a correlation point. Tell us how many trillion are in the 0.5%, then give us the trillion that result from the percentage point drop.
Otherwise you're just spouting impressive-sounding noise. Do not copy how all other news outlets do the job : they do it specifically so nobody can understand.