Michael P. answered • 08/03/19
Forecasting--or prediction--presents one or more hypotheses about the occurrence of events in the future. These forecasts are based on the occurrence of past events. Occurrence is recognized by an observation that the event occurred or did not occur or by a measurement that the event occurred to one of several ordered extents.
Observation in itself is a qualitative process that essentially describes whether material (say) has a quality or it doesn't have a quality. Qualitative processes describe a binary outcome.
Measurement is a quantitative process that describes which of a sequence of ordered states occurs. Measurement requires a sequence of (more than two) possible outcomes and requires that the sequence of outcome is ordered to say that one outcome is less than or greater than another. The number of possible outcomes is related to the precision of the measurement.