Analytics Magazine Analytics Magazine, July/August 2014 | Page 75

When it comes to analyzing trends, most the products I tried fall into the semiautomatic group. That is, I need to choose a trend curve, and the software finds the appropriate parameters for that model, gives forecasts, summary statistics and graphs. WORKING WITH A SAMPLE OF PRODUCTS In my class, students use StatTools, part of the Palisade Software Suite that comes with their textbook. Its forecasting capabilities are regression, exponential smoothing (Brown, Holt and Winters’) and moving averages. If data followed some nonlinear function, the students could make mathematical transformations to make the data linear and then use ordinary linear regression on it, and do the inverse transformation to get the forecast. They also have several Excel templates I developed (Gompertz, Pearl-Reed, Weibull, etc.) for the course. For this article, I tried a small sample of professional How will you stand out from the crowd? A membership in INFORMS will help! Join INFORMS for rest of 2014 for just $80. Exclusive offer to Analytics subscribers. Promocode ANALYTICS-HALF. • Certification for Analytics Professionals • Online access to the latest in operations research and advanced analytics techniques • Networking Opportunities available at INFORMS Meetings and Communities • New Members receive one free Subdivison membership in 2014 A NA L Y T I C S visit http://join.informs.org J U LY / A U G U S T 2 014 | 75