Business 620 Critical Thinking Three Salvatore’ s Chapter 6: Discussion Questions: 1, 7, and 15. Problems: 7 and appendix problems 1 and 3( pp. 256 – 257). Salvatore’ s Chapter 7: Discussion Questions: 3, 11, and 12. Problems: 4, 12, and 13. Discussion Question 1:
a) What is forecasting? Why is it so important in the management of business firms and other enterprises?
b) What are the different types of forecasting?
c) How can the firm determine the most suitable forecasting method to use?
Discussion Question 7: a) Which type of smoothing technique is generally better?
b) How do we determine which of two smoothing techniques is better?
c) How can we forecast the values of a time series that contains a secular trend as well as strong seasonal and random variations?
Discussion Question 15: Explain why it is still useful to pursue forecasting even though it is often off the market by wide margins
Problem 7: The following table represents data on three leading indicators for a three-month period. Construct the composite index( with each indicator assigned equal weight) and the diffusion index.