Forecasting

The VA Medical Center in Brooklyn orders Tylenol tablets each week. You are the assistant purchasing manager for the medical center and wish to estimate (forecast) the number of Tylenol tablets that should be purchased for next week. Below is the number of tablets used each week for the past ten weeks. "A & B are the last two non-zero digits in your social security number.

tablets used tablets used

(00’s) week (00’s)

1 7 6 13

2 10 7 14

3 12 8 12

4 14 9 15

5 10 10 13

1. Graph this time series data (ie., plot a scattered diagram)
2. Use each of the following forecasting methods to determine which would be best to use to estimate (forecast) week 11 (next weeks) tablet usage and therefore the number of tablets to purchase.
   1. Two Week Moving Average
   2. Three week Weighted Moving Average (with the weight for the most recent week is 6, the weight for the next most recent week is 3 and for third most recent week the weight is 1 (1, 3 & 6).
   3. The same as question 2 except the weights are (2, 1 & 3) where 3 is the most recent weight.
   4. Exponential Smoothing using alpha = 0.9
   5. Exponential Smoothing using alpha = 0.3
3. Compute the Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) and the Mean Squared Error (MSE) for each of the 5 methods.
4. Select the best method and use it to forecast tablet usage for week 11.

Price: $7.85

Solution: The downloadable solution consists of 5 pages, 285 words and 1 charts.
Deliverable: Word Document