Perspectives on Various Issues of Interest

His' and Her's Road Trip

HERS:

Pulls off at wrong exit.

opens window

asks directions of a knowledgeable police officer

Arrives at destination presently.

HIS:

Pulls off at wrong exit absolutely positive it's the correct one.

Drives five miles into wilderness, still thinks he's right.

Drives an extra 5 miles just in case.

Finally rolls down window just to get fresh air

Pulls up to a 7 -11

Gets three hot-dogs, a large slurpee, and beef jerky

Asks person behind counter how to get back onto the highway.

Gets back into car.

Laughs at the idea of looking at a map as he pulls away from the 7-11.

Drives down a dirt road with no street lights insisting this is the way back because guy from 7-11 said it was.

Almost hits a deer

Curses the night

Curses you

Curses the large slurpee

Drives and fiddles with radio.

Yells at you for suggesting the map again

Admits he didn't want to go to Thanksgiving at your sister's anyway.

He hates your sister.

Ever since she called him a pernicious weasel

He had to look up pernicious.

Couldn't find a dictionary.

Finally found a dictionary

Couldn't spell pernicious.

Seethes at the memory of it all

But she is laughing inside...

And of course you're still lost.

Forecasting Software in Practice

Practitioners use forecasting software emanating from two camps. The first source is the stand-along, dedicated forecast product, such as Forecast Pro, Autobox and others, which just does a variety of forecasting procedures. Typically, these include regression, Box-Jenkins models, exponential smoothing models by Brown, Holt, Winters, etc. The second is the general statistical software product, such as SPSS, Minitab, SAS, Systat, Statgraphics, NCSS and others, which include forecasting as part of many statistical techniques available. There are two main reasons why a practitioner may want to buy and use a dedicated forecast program over a general statistics product. First, some dedicated forecast programs may have specific techniques that the general statistics program may not. These include state space smoothing algorithms, econometric models, transfer function models and others. The second is that some dedicated forecasting products offer a higher level of "automation" which translates into ease-of-use, then the general statistics program group.

Source: Yurkiewicz, J. "Forecasting at steady state?" ORMS Today, June 2008, Volume 35, No. 3: pp. 54-63.