1. CREATE THE DIFFERENCE Before you start Please press F5 to run this show.

2. CREATE THE DIFFERENCE Business Forecasting and Planning This module is partially assessed by a practical test. In the test SPSS (Statistics Package for Social Sciences) and Microsoft Excel are used to help analyse data sets and obtain forecasts.

3. CREATE THE DIFFERENCE Business Forecasting and Planning In the example that follows an estate agent is interested in predicting the price of a house given its size in terms of floor space.

4. CREATE THE DIFFERENCE Business Forecasting and Planning A data file is supplied:

5. CREATE THE DIFFERENCE Business Forecasting and Planning Which may need amendments:

6. CREATE THE DIFFERENCE Business Forecasting and Planning and for which appropriate output has to be generated:

7. CREATE THE DIFFERENCE Business Forecasting and Planning

8. CREATE THE DIFFERENCE Business Forecasting and Planning In test conditions, the student is required to interpret this output and be able to extract the correct forecasting equation, which would enable the estate agent to obtain the desired house price predictions. Students may also be supplied with time- series data to analyse:

9. CREATE THE DIFFERENCE Business Forecasting and Planning In the following example the data relates to quarterly fuel costs and the student is required to analyse this using an appropriate decomposition model, producing a moving average series and/or seasonal indices.

10. CREATE THE DIFFERENCE Business Forecasting and Planning

11. CREATE THE DIFFERENCE Business Forecasting and Planning Again, it is essential that all output/analysis can be interpreted correctly and used to quantify the trend and/or seasonal effect to allow future fuel costs to be forecast.

12. CREATE THE DIFFERENCE The End Click here to go back to module informationhere