J. Scott Armstrong

J. Scott Armstrong
Born	March 26, 1937 (1937-03-26) (age 74)
Residence	U.S.
Nationality	American
Fields	Marketing, advertising
Institutions	The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Alma mater	MIT Sloan School of Management Carnegie Mellon Lehigh University

J. Scott Armstrong (born March 26, 1937) is an author, forecasting and marketing expert,^{[1][2] [3]} and a professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2007, Armstrong made headlines by challenging Al Gore to a $10,000 bet on yearly temperatures, which he refers to as "The Global Warming Challenge".^[3][4][5] He has also testified before Congress on flaws in forecasts of polar bear populations.^[6][7]

Armstrong is the co-founder of the site advertisingprinciples.com,^[8] which in 2004, won the MERLOT award for best business education site.^[9]

Contents 1 Education and background 2 Forecasting 3 Marketing and advertising 4 Selected publications 4.1 Books 4.2 Papers 4.2.1 Forecasting 4.2.2 Marketing 4.2.3 Scientific methods 5 References 6 External links

Education and background

Armstrong received his B.A. in applied science (1959) and his B.S. in industrial engineering (1960) from Lehigh University. In 1965, he received his M.S. in industrial administration from Carnegie-Mellon University. He received his Ph.D. in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1968.^[10]

He has taught in Thailand, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Japan, and other countries.^[10]

Forecasting

• Professor Armstrong is the author of Long-Range Forecasting and the editor and co-author of Principles of Forecasting.

• He was a founder and editor of the Journal of Forecasting,^[11] and a founder of the International Journal of Forecasting, and the International Symposium on Forecasting.^[7]

• Armstrong examined the methods used by the IPCC to make projections. In an article published in Energy & Environment, he claimed that the IPCC and climate scientists have ignored the scientific literature on forecasting principles.^[3][12][13] Armstrong wrote:

When we inspected the 17 [forecasting] articles, we found that none of them referred to the scientific literature on forecasting methods.

It is difficult to understand how scientific forecasting could be conducted without reference to the research literature on how to make forecasts. One would expect to see empirical justification for the forecasting methods that were used. We concluded that climate forecasts are informed by the modelers’ experience and by their models—but that they are unaided by the application of forecasting principles. (page 1015) [1]

However, according to Amstrup and others' published rebuttal in the journal Interfaces:

Green and Armstrong (2007, p.997) also concluded that the thousands of refereed scientific publications that comprise the basis of the IPCC reports and represent the state of scientific knowledge on past, present and future climates "were not the outcome of scientific procedures." Such cavalier statements appear to reflect an overt attempt by the authors of those reports to cast doubt about the reality of human-caused global warming ... ^[14]

• Armstrong extended a Global Warming Challenge to Al Gore in June 2007,^[5][15] in the style of the Simon–Ehrlich wager. Each side was to place $10,000 ($20,000 total) in trust, with the winner being determined by future temperature change. Gore declined the wager, stating that he does not gamble.^[16] Climatologist Gavin Schmidt described Armstrong's wager as "essentially a bet on year to year weather noise" rather than on climate change.^[17]

• Armstrong has published articles and testified before Congress on forecasts of polar bear populations, arguing that previous estimates were too flawed to justify listing the bear as an endangered species.^[6][7][18] In an evaluation of Armstrong and other authors’ criticism of polar bear population forecasts, Amstrup and other authors, writing a response in the journal Interfaces, concluded that all of the claims made by Armstrong, which included lack of independence of the USGS, were either mistaken or misleading.^[14]

Marketing and advertising

Armstrong's book Persuasive Advertising: Evidence-based Principles was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010. In it, Armstrong presents 194 principles designed to increase the persuasiveness of advertisements. The principles were derived from empirical data, expert opinion, and observation. They are organized and indexed under ten general principles (e.g. emotion, attention), and those ten principles are further grouped into three categories: strategy, general tactics, and media-specific tactics.^[19]

In 1989, a University of Maryland study ranked Professor Armstrong among the top 15 marketing professors in the U.S. based on a study using peer ratings, citations, and publications.^[20] He serves or has served on editorial positions for the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Business Research, Interfaces, and other journals. He was awarded the Society for Marketing Advances Distinguished Scholar Award for 2000.

Armstrong's works are frequently cited; his "first-author" citation rate currently averages over 200 per year.^[20]

Armstrong has received the MERLOT Award for Exemplary Online Learning Resources as "Best Internet Site in Business Education" for 2004.^[9]

Selected publications

Books

• Persuasive Advertising: Evidence-based Principles (ISBN 978-1-4039-1343-2)
• Long-Range Forecasting (ISBN 978-0-47-103002-7)
• Principles of Forecasting: A Handbook for Researchers and Practitioners (ISBN 978-0-79-237930-0)

Papers

Forecasting

• K.C. Green, J. Scott Armstrong & A. Graefe (2007), "Methods to Elicit Forecasts from Groups: Delphi and Prediction Markets Compared", in Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting, 8, 17–20.
• Fred Collopy, J. Scott Armstrong (1992), "Rule-Based Forecasting: Development and Validation of an Expert Systems Approach to Combining Time Series Extrapolations", Management Science, 38 (10), 1394–1414.
• J. Scott Armstrong, Fred Collopy (1992), "Error Measures for Generalizing about Forecasting Methods: Empirical Comparisons", International Journal of Forecasting, 8, 69–80.

Marketing

• J. Scott Armstrong, Terry S. Overton (1977), "Estimating Nonresponse Bias in Mail Surveys", Journal of Marketing Research 14, 396–402.
• J. Scott Armstrong (1991), "Prediction of Consumer Behavior by Experts and Novices", Journal of Consumer Research, 18 (September), 251–256.

Scientific methods

• J. Scott Armstrong, Robert J. Brodie, Andrew G. Parsons (2001), "Hypotheses in Marketing Science: Literature Review and Publication Audit", Marketing Letters, 12 (2),171–187.
• J. Scott Armstrong, Ruth A. Pagell (2003), "Reaping Benefits from Management Research: Lessons from the Forecasting Principles Project", Interfaces, 33 (6), 89–111.

References

External links

News media

• Armstrong, J. Scott. "Improving Learning at Universities: Who is Responsible?", "University of Pennsylvania Alamanac", December 14, 2004. Accessed May 10, 2007.
• Kranish, Michael. "Flaws are found in validating medical studies", "Boston Globe", August 15, 2005. Accessed May 10, 2007.
• Surowiecki, James. "In Praise of Third Place", The New Yorker, December 4, 2006. Accessed May 10, 2007.
• Hume, Brit. "Is Al Gore Willing to Put His Money Where His Mouth Is?", FOX News July 6, 2007. Accessed July 9, 2007.
• Duffy, Michael. "Chorus does not justify climate prophecies", Sydney Morning Herald, July 7, 2007. Accessed July 9, 2007.

Other media

• Dr. Scott Armstrong on Climate Forecasting – Part I – First of a three-part series.

Persondata
Name	Armstrong, J. Scott
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Date of birth	1937-03-26
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