Question: Ms. Winnie Lin's company sells computers. Monthly sales for a six-month period are as follows:
a. Plot the monthly data on a sheet of graph paper.
b. Compute the sales forecast for July using the following approaches:
(1) a four-month moving average;
(2) a weighted three-month moving average using .50 for June, .30 for May and .20 for April;
(3) a linear trend equation
(4) exponential smoothing with α (smoothing constant) equal to .40, assuming a February forecast of 18,000
c. Which method do you think is the least appropriate? Why?