The manager of a small health clinic would like to use exponential smoothing to forecast demand for laboratory services in the facility. However, she is not sure whether to use a high or low value of α. To make her decision, she would like to compare the forecast accuracy of a high and low α on historical data. She has decided to use α = 0.7 for the high value and α = 0.1 for the low value. Given the following historical data, which do you think would be better to use?

Week ........ Demand (lab requirements)

1 .................. 330

2 .................. 350

3 .................. 320

4 .................. 370

5 .................. 368

6 .................. 343