The following table contains the demand from the last 5 months.
Month Actual Demand
1 31
2 34
3 33
4 35
5 37
a. Calculate the single exponential smoothing forecast for these data using an α of 0.30 and an initial forecast (F1) of 31. Report the forecast for Month 6 in AnswerSheet.
b. Calculate the exponential smoothing with trend forecast for these data using an α of 0.30, a β of 0.30, an initial trend forecast (T1) of 1, and an initial exponentially smoothed forecast (F1) of 30. Report the forecast including trend for Month 6 in AnswerSheet.
c. Calculate the mean absolute deviation (MAD) for each forecast. Which forecasting method performs better in this problem (pick from the list)?