Below is the Beauford museum visitor record for the past three years. The museum director thinks to plan ...

  

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.