1. What pattern(s) did Jame observe from a time series plot of Surtido cookie sales?
2. Are the autocorrelations consistent with the pattern(s) Jame observed in the time series plot?
3. Select and justify an appropriate smoothing procedure for forecasting future cookie sales and produce forecasts for the remaining months of 2003.
4. Use Karin's historical monthly average suggestion to construct forecasts for the remaining months of 2003. Which forecasts, yours or Karin's, do you prefer? Why?
In Case 3-5, Jame Luna investigated the data pattern of monthly Surtido cookie sales (see Table 3-12). In that case, Karin, one of the members of Jame's team, suggested forecasts of future sales for a given month might be generated by simply using the historical average sales for that month. After learning something about smoothing methods however, Jame thinks a smoothing procedure might be a better way to construct forecasts of future sales