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What is forecasting?
The use of historic data to determine the direction
of future trends. Investors utilize forecasting to determine if events affecting a company, such as sales expectations, will increase or decrease the price of shares in that company.
Forecasting also provides an important benchmark for firms which have a long-term perspective of operations.
What is forecasting?
Forecasting is used by companies to determine how to allocate their budgets for an upcoming period of time. And typically based on demand for the goods and services it offers, compared to the cost of producing them.
Strategic planning (long range planning) Finance and accounting (budgets and cost controls) Marketing (future sales, new products) Production and operations
Time
REMEMBER: Forecasting is based on the assumption that the past predicts the future! When forecasting, think carefully whether or not the past is strongly related to what you expect to see in the future
Causal Relationship: models that use statistical techniques to establish relationships between various items and demand
Simulation: models that can incorporate some randomness and non-linear effects
1. Data availability 2. Time horizon for the forecast 3. Required accuracy 4. Required Resources
Apr
May Jun Jul
1,275
1,210 1,195 ?
= 1,227
FJul
What do we observe?
5-month average smoothes data more; 3-month average more responsive
Ft+1 =
t
n
A w
Time
For a 6-month SMA, attributing equal weights to all past data we miss the downward trend
Month
Jan Feb Mar Apr
Bottles
1,325 1,353 1,305 1,275
May
Jun Jul
1,210
1,195 ?
FJul =
= 1,277
In other words, because we used equal weights, a slight downward trend that actually exists is not observed
The higher the importance we give to recent data , the more we pick up the declining trend in our forecast.
WMA is better than SMA because of the ability to vary the weights!
moving average
of forecast recent error when forecast = 2/(k+1). value to be kept same requires that distribution the past k of forecast data points error when be kept = 2/(k+1).
Exponential smoothing and moving average are similar as both assume a stationary, not trending, time series, therefore lagging behind the trend if one exists.
Trend
What do you think will happen to a moving average or exponential smoothing model when there is a trend in the data?
Impact of trend
Sales
Actual Data
Forecast
Regular exponential smoothing will always lag behind the trend. Can we include trend analysis in exponential smoothing?
Month
FITt Ft Tt
By using linear regression, we are trying to explore which independent variables affect the dependent variable
Y a bX
So, the error is
i yi - Yi
Where: is the error y is the observed value Y is the predicted value
Min
i2
Y a bX
a y bx
xy nxy b x nx
2 2
Forecast Error
Forecast error = Difference between actual and forecasted value (also known as residual)
MFE
A F
i 1 t
1. A more positive or negative MFE implies worse performance; the forecast is biased.
MAD
A F
i1 t
1. Higher MAD implies worse performance. 2. If errors are normally distributed, then =1.25MAD
Low MFE & MAD: The forecast errors are small & unbiased
Key Point
Forecast must be measured for accuracy!
The most common means of doing so is, by measuring either the mean absolute deviation or the standard deviation of the forecast error
RSFE (At Ft )
i1
RSFE TS MAD
Positive tracking signal: most of the time actual values are above our forecasted values Negative tracking signal: most of the time actual values are below our forecasted values
Month
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
Actual
1,325 1,353 1,305 1,275 1,210 1,195
Forecast
1370 1306 1334 1290 1251 1175
Apr
May Jun
1,275
1,210 1,195
1,349
1,334 1,309
70
- 6.0
33
- 2.0
We observe that FIT performs a lot better than ES Conclusion: Probably there is trend in the data which Exponential smoothing cannot capture