Lee’s is a local discount store that sells a variety of merchandise, much like Kmart, Wal-Mart, and Target. In particular, Lee’s sells a full line of hardware. The company has kept track of weekly...

Lee’s is a local discount store that sells a variety of merchandise, much like Kmart, Wal-Mart, and Target. In particular, Lee’s sells a full line of hardware. The company has kept track of weekly total dollar sales of hardware items for the past 104 weeks. These data appear in the file Hardware Sales 1.xlsx. Lee’s is planning to use moving averages, with an appropriate span, to forecast future weekly hardware sales. Does this appear to be a good idea?

Objective To judge the effectiveness of the moving averages method, with different spans, to forecast weekly hardware sales at Lee’s.