Fundamental in science, finance, insurance…
Prediction is often but not always the companion of epistemic understanding. One of the frequent criticisms of systems for predictive analytics is that they don't actually "understand" the "meaning" of the events they're predicting, leading to absurd and/or undesired outcomes.
Be mindful that prediction rarely takes place in a vacuum. People will very often claim to be merely predicting things when in fact they're making them happen, maybe deliberately. Financial investment, for example, might be seen as a prediction that the price of the asset will go up, but once the investment is made, the owner is incentivized to do everything they can to increase the price regardless of the soundness of their original prediction. The investment might also entice other investors, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, as often occurs in economic bubbles.
Prediction is very difficult in the social sciences.1
Ian Lundberg et al., “The Origins of Unpredictability in Life Outcome Prediction Tasks,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, no. 24 (June 11, 2024): e2322973121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2322973121; Jake M. Hofman, Amit Sharma, and Duncan J. Watts, “Prediction and Explanation in Social Systems,” Science 355, no. 6324 (February 3, 2017): 486–88, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal3856.