4.2 The following data reflect the sales of electric knives for the period January 1991 through April 1992: 1991 1992 Jan 19 Jan 82 Feb 15 Feb 17 Mar 39 Mar 26 Apr 102 Apr 29 May 90 Jun 29 Jul 90...

4.2
The following data reflect the sales of electric knives for the period January 1991 through April 1992:

1991 1992

Jan 19 Jan 82

Feb 15 Feb 17

Mar 39 Mar 26

Apr 102 Apr 29

May 90

Jun 29

Jul 90

Aug 46

Sep 30

Oct 66

Nov 80

Dec 89

Management wants to use both moving averages and expo- nential smoothing as methods for forecasting sales. Answer the following questions:

(a)
What will the forecasts be for May 1992 using a 3-, 5-, 7-, 9-, and 11- month moving average?

(b)
What will the forecasts be for May 1992 for exponential smoothing with
α
values of 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9?

(c)
Assuming that the past pattern will continue into the future, what
k
and
α
values should management select in order to minimize the errors?