The Futures Polygon

This method shows how the probabilities associated with events and impacts obtained by a Futures Wheel can be displayed in polar coordinates to generate a polygon. This extension to Futures Wheel thinking often results in insight into linkages among events and their consequences. The process is the following: The “wheel of futures”, obtained by the Futures Wheel technique, is postulated. ; unanimous judgments are taken as an indication of plausibility; work continues only on impacts which are considered plausible. Each Futures Wheel participant is asked to attribute an occurrence probability to recognized impacts When the occurrence probability evaluation has been made for all Futures Wheel impacts for a particular event, a graphic polar representation is constructed. The single event whose probabilities are being studied is located at the center of the diagram and the spokes represent the impacts of that event. The length of each spoke represents its probability. If all the spokes are of the same length, that is the impacts are all equally likely, the polygon derived by connecting the ends of the spokes will approach a circle in shape and the higher the probability, the more the polygon will approach its maximum area.