Question 12 of 50

A car dealer predicted February demand for 142 Ford Mustangs. Actual February demand was 153. Using a smoothing constant (alpha) of 0.20, what is the exponential smoothing forecast for March demand?

Which forecasting time horizon is generally used for planning purchasing, job scheduling, and production levels, and typically spans up to 1 year but is more commonly less than 3 months?

What is the primary distinction between a quantitative forecast and a qualitative forecast?

A garden supply store had shed sales of 18, 16, and 14 units for October, November, and December, respectively. What is the 3-month moving average forecast for January?

Which qualitative forecasting technique uses a group process with decision makers, staff personnel, and respondents to make a forecast, often through a series of questionnaires?

What are the four components of a time series?

For the past 8 quarters, a port has been tracking tonnage of grain unloaded. In the most recent quarter (Quarter 8), the actual tonnage was 182, and the forecast with an alpha of 0.10 was 178.22. What is the forecast for Quarter 9 using this data?

Which measure of forecast error is calculated by taking the sum of the absolute values of the individual forecast errors and dividing by the number of periods of data?

A manufacturer is forecasting demand for pollution-control equipment. For month 2, the forecast average (F2) is 12.8 units and the smoothed trend (T2) is 1.92 units. What is the Forecast Including Trend (FIT) for month 2?

What is a major limitation of moving-average forecasts mentioned in the text?

If a computer distributor expects annual demand to be 1,200 units and the seasonal index for January is 0.957, what is the monthly seasonal forecast for January?

A bakery is monitoring its croissant forecast. For the most recent quarter, the cumulative error is +35 and the Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) is 14.2. What is the value of the tracking signal?

What term describes a forecast that is consistently higher or consistently lower than the actual values?

Nodel Construction has a regression equation for sales: Sales (in millions) = 1.75 + 0.25 * (payroll in billions). If the local payroll is predicted to be 6 billion next year, what are the estimated sales?

What does a coefficient of determination (r-squared) of 0.81 indicate in a regression model?

What type of forecasting approach combines the intelligence of multiple supply-chain partners to create more accurate information, as practiced by Walmart with its suppliers?

The demand for electric power at N.Y. Edison over 7 years had a sum of xy equal to 3,063. The number of data points (n) is 7, the average of x (x-bar) is 4, the average of y (y-bar) is 98.86, and the sum of x-squared is 140. What is the slope (b) of the trend line?

Which of the seven steps in the forecasting system involves selecting from models like moving averages, econometrics, or regression analysis?

If a company uses a 3-month weighted moving average with weights of 3 for the last month, 2 for two months ago, and 1 for three months ago, and sales were 18 (October), 16 (November), and 14 (December), what is the forecast for January?

What is the primary objective of the smoothing constant (alpha) in exponential smoothing?

A port's forecast for grain tonnage had a sum of squared errors of 1,526.52 over 8 quarters. What is the Mean Squared Error (MSE) for this forecast?

In a trend-adjusted exponential smoothing model, what are the two smoothing constants required?

What type of forecast is concerned with rates of technological progress and the birth of new products?

A project's forecast has a sum of absolute percent errors of 44.75 percent over 8 periods. What is the Mean Absolute Percent Error (MAPE)?

According to the text, a problem with both MAD and MSE is that their values depend on what factor?

A computer distributor's sales for February in Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3 were 70, 85, and 85 units respectively. The average monthly demand over all months is 94 units. What is the seasonal index for February?

What is the primary characteristic of an associative forecasting model like linear regression?

To measure the accuracy of regression estimates, the standard error of the estimate (Sy,x) is computed. What does this value measure?

What is the term for a forecasting approach where the computer automatically changes the smoothing constant to keep errors to a minimum?

San Diego Hospital's trend line for patient days is y-hat = 8,090 + 21.5x, where x is the time in months. For period 67, what is the trend-only forecast for patient days?

After calculating a trend-only forecast of 9,530 patient days for January (period 67), San Diego Hospital applies a monthly seasonal index of 1.04. What is the final seasonalized forecast?

What does a coefficient of correlation (r) of +1 indicate?

Which forecasting principle states that sophisticated models are not always better than simple ones, and that no single technique should be used for all products?

What is the simplest way to forecast, assuming that demand in the next period will be equal to demand in the most recent period?

The trend line for quarterly demand for Ford F150 pickups is y-hat = 10 + 3x, where x=8 for Quarter I of year 3. What is the trend forecast for Quarter III of year 3?

Given a trend forecast of 40 units for Quarter III and a seasonal index of 1.30, what is the final seasonalized forecast for Quarter III?

What is a key reality of forecasting mentioned in Chapter 4 regarding aggregated forecasts?

In multiple regression, if you add a second independent variable (e.g., interest rates) to a model that already includes payroll, what is the purpose?

A construction company has a multiple regression model: Sales = 1.80 + 0.30*x1 - 5.0*x2, where x1 is payroll and x2 is interest rate. If payroll is 6 billion and interest rates are 6 percent (0.06), what is the sales forecast?

Which of the following is NOT one of the three major types of forecasts used in planning future operations?

What type of data pattern repeats itself after a period of days, weeks, months, or quarters?

A bakery had an actual demand of 95 croissants and a forecast of 100. The next quarter, demand was 115 and the forecast was 100. What is the cumulative error after these two quarters?

In a trend-adjusted exponential smoothing forecast for month 3, the forecast average (F2) was 12.8, the trend (T2) was 1.92, the actual demand (A2) was 17, and the alpha is 0.2. What is the smoothed forecast average for month 3 (F3)?

What is a primary reason that forecasting in the service sector presents unusual challenges?

The data for a regression model shows Σy = 15.0, Σx = 18, Σx-squared = 80, and Σxy = 51.5, with n=6. What is the value of the slope, b?

If a company uses a tracking signal and finds it is consistently positive and increasing, what does this indicate about the forecast?

What type of time horizon is a 5-year forecast for park attendance at Disney used for?

The least-squares method for trend projection results in a straight line that minimizes what?

In calculating the coefficient of correlation, r, for Nodel Construction, the final result was 0.901. What does this value suggest?