26. The number of cans of soft drinks sold in a machine each week is recorded below.

Develop forecasts
using three-period moving average.

338, 219, 278, 265, 314, 323, 299, 259, 287, 302

For a 3-period moving average, we take the average of the previous three weeks’ can of soft drink sold
as our forecast for next week: Ft+1 = (Dt + Dt−1 + Dt−2)/3. Since we need at least three weeks to compute
the average, and we only have data beginning in First Week, Fourth week is the earliest week for which
we can compute the forecast: F4thW = (D3rdW + D2ndW + D1stW)/3 = (338 + 219 + 278)/ 3 = 278.3. The
forecasts for the other months are reported in the table below.

Forecast
Week Soft Drinks Sold 3-period moving ave.
1 338
2 219
3 278
4 265 278.3
5 314 254.0
6 323 285.7
7 299 300.7
8 259 312.0
9 287 293.7
10 302 281.7

27. Use a four-period moving average to forecast attendance at baseball games. Historical records show

5346, 7812, 6513, 5783, 5982, 6519, 6283, 5577, 6712, 7345

For a 5-period moving average, we take the average of the previous five games’ attendance as our
forecast for next games’ attendance: Ft+1 = (Dt + Dt−1 + Dt−2+ Dt−3 Dt−4) /5. Since we need at least three
games’ attendance to compute the average, and we only have data beginning in First game, Sixth game
attendance is the earliest game for which we can compute the forecast: F6thG = (D5thG + D4thG + D3rdG +
D2ndG + D1stW)/5 = (5346 + 7812 + 6513 + 5783 + 5982)/ 5 = 6287.2. The forecasts for the other months
are reported in the table below.

Forecast
Games Attendance 5-period moving ave.
1 5346
2 7812
3 6513
4 5783
5 5982
6 6519 6287.2
7 6283 6521.8
8 5577 6216.0
9 6712 6028.8
10 7345 6214.6
28. A hospital records the number of floral deliveries its patients receive each day. For a two-week
period, the record show

15, 27, 26, 24, 18, 21, 26, 19, 15, 28, 25, 26, 17, 23

Use exponential smoothing with a smoothing constant of .4 to forecast the number of deliveries.

The formula for exponential smoothing is: Ft+1 = Ft + α(Dt − Ft). To determine the forecast for 1st day, F13,
we need to know the forecast for December, F12. This, in turn, requires us to know the forecast for
November, F11. So we need to go all the way back to the beginning and compute the forecast for each
month. For Period 2, we have F2 = F1+α(D1−F1). But how do we get the forecast for Period 1? There are
several ways to approach this, but we’ll just use the demand for Period 1 as both demand and forecast
for Period 1. Now we can write F2 = F1 + α(D1 − F1) = 37 + 0.3(37 − 37) = 37. For Period 3 we have F3 = F2 +
α(D2 − F2) = 37 + 0.3(40 − 37) = 37.9. The forecasts for the other months are show in the table below. For
Period 13 we have F13 = F12 + α(D12 − F12) = 50.85 + 0.3(54 − 50.85) = 51.79.