Case Assignment $2$

Due May $7^{th}($Tuesday$),11$:$59$pm

Chapter $4$

CASE SCENARIO: BOULEVARD INDUSTRIES

Boulevard Industries has decided to provide safety training to its $1,500+$ employees who work in the Boulevard main office. Part of this training is a $60-$minute presentation by a member of the Boulevard human resources $($HR$)$ department and is held in a conference room at the main office building. Boulevard plans to complete this process by holding five sessions a day on Thursdays $($Th$)$ and Fridays $($F$)$ each week for the next $4$ months. During the first week of sessions, the HR department recorded the following information concerning attendance.

$\backslash$table$[[$Session$,$Day,Time,Attendance Forecast,Actual Attendance$],[1,$Th$,9$ a$.$m$.,10,13],[2,$Th$,11$ a$.$m$.,10,10],[3,$Th$,2$ p$.$m$.,10,12],[4,$Th$,3$ p$.$m$.,8,12],[5,$Th$,4$ p$.$m$.,7,8],[6,$F$,9$ a$.$m$.,10,11],[7,$F$,11$ a$.$m$.,10,9],[8,$F$,2$ p$.$m$.,10,9],[9,$F$,3$ p$.$m$.,8,4],[10,$F$,4$ p$.$m$.,7,7]]$

Questions

During this first week of sessions, what was the mean error of the HR department's forecasts $($ME$)?$ What was the mean absolute deviation $($MAD$)?$ What was the mean absolute percent error $($MAPE$)?$

Assume that the HR department's forecast for the Thursday $9$ a$.$m$.$ session was $10,$ as shown in the table. If HR had used simple exponential smoothing with an alpha $()$ of $0\mathrm{.}2$ to forecast the remainder of the sessions that week, what would the forecast for the Friday $9$ a$.$m$.$ session have been?

Someone in HR noticed that overall attendance on Friday was somewhat less than on Thursday and believes this pattern will continue. Calculate the two seasonal relatives that express this fluctuation, based on this data.

Using your answer from question $3,$ how many people would you forecast to attend next Friday's sessions, if a total of $100$ people were forecast to attend all $10$ sessions next week?