As you can see in the following table, demand for heart transplant surgery at Washington General Hospital has increased steadily in the past few years:
|
Year
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
|
Heart Transplants
|
45
|
50
|
52
|
56
|
58
|
?
|
The director of medical services predicted 6 years ago that demand in year 1 would be 41 surgeries.
a) Use exponential smoothing, first with a smoothing constant of .6 and then with one of .9, to develop forecasts for years 2 through 6.
b) Use a 3-year moving average to forecast demand in years 4, 5, and 6.
c) Use the trend-projection method to forecast demand in years 1 through 6.
d) With MAD as the criterion, which of the four forecasting methods is best?