Below is the Beauford museum visitor record for the past three years. The museum director thinks to plan better for the growth in the future, she needs to develop a system that will enable her to forecast number of visitors by month for up to one year in advance.
Month
First Year
Second Year
Third Year
January
242
263
282
February
235
238
255
March
232
247
265
April
178
193
205
May
184
193
210
June
140
149
160
July
145
157
166
August
152
161
174
September
110
122
126
October
130
130
148
November
152
167
173
December
206
230
235
Managerial Report
Perform an analysis of the number of visitors for the museum. Prepare a report for the director that summarizes your findings, forecasts, and recommendations. Including the following:
1. A graph of the time series
2. An analysis of the seasonality of the data. Indicate the seasonal indexes for each month, and comment on the high seasonal and low seasonal visitor months. Do the seasonal indexes make intuitive sense? Discuss
3. Forecast number of visitors for January through December for the fourth year.
4. Assume that January visitors for the fourth year turned out to be 295. What was your forecast error? If this error is large, the director may be puzzled about the difference between your forecast and the actual number of visitors. What can you do to resolve her uncertainty in the forecasting procedure?
5. Recommend what the director can do to increase number of visitors for the low seasonal months.