DATA4400 2024 Trimester 2:  Assessment 1 (individual report 20 marks)

General Instructions

Go to Learning Forum> Week 5 TIME SERIES and download:
D44_A1_DATAGENERATOR

Open D44_A1_DATAGENERATOR. The first four columns (A, B, C, D) are: t (month number); date; BWsales (BarrelWave sales); GLsales (GuyLine sales).There are 133 rows corresponding to labels plus 132 months (11 years) from January 2013 up to December 2023. The unit of measurement of sales is Lakh Erehwon $ per month (LE$/month).D44_A1_DATAGENERATOR includes arandom number generatorso it will be different each time it is opened. You need to set up a file that does not change by copying the columns as numeric. Follow the instructions below.

Open a new Excel file and Copy& Paste123 the first four columns of D44_A1_DATAGENERATOR into your new file. Call this new file D44_A1_#######, where ####### is your student number. Your file will be different from anyone else’s. 

Make two copies of D44_A1_#######. Call the first copy TRAIN and delete the rows corresponding to 2023. So TRAIN contains data for 2013-2022. Call the second copy TEST and remove the rows corresponding to years 2013-2022, so that TEST has 13 rows: labels, plus monthly values for 2023. 

You read TRAIN intoExploratory and Tableau and make forecasts for 2023. You export the forecasts into TEST and then calculate the forecast errors and statistics of the forecast errors using Excel.

You should submit your answersto the questions a) … f),on the following page, as a Word file. Figure labels are placed underneath the figure and table cations are placed above the table. Round the RMSE and MASE to an appropriate number of significant figures. Parts a) and b) are for BarrelWave only. Parts c) d) e) refer to both stores. Part f) is for GuyLine only.SCopy and Paste, using source format, your TEST Excel sheet with your calculations at the end of the Word file.

Submit

Individual Report Word document with answers for a) to f)

File SubmissionTEST Excel file including your calculations for parts d) and f)

Questions

NOTE– the figure and table captions should include:details of the variables including the unit of measurement (e.g. Sales (monthly total, LE$); the time period for observations and the time increment (e.g. month from January 2013- December 2022); and if appropriate the time period of forecasts and the name of the forecasting technique (e.g. HW forecasts for 2023).

1. Plot TRAINsales time series plus Holt-Winter (HW) forecasts for 2023 for BarrelWave in Tableau. Save the graph. Import the graph into your report and label it as Figure 1, with a detailed caption.

[3 marks]

1. Plot TRAINsales time series plus Prophet forecasts for 2023 for BarrelWave in Exploratory. Save the graph. Import the graph into your report and label it as Figure 2, with a detailed caption.

[3 marks]

1. Selecting from statistics given in Tableau and Exploratory, construct a 2 by 2 table with rows BarrelWave, GuyLine, and columns HW, Prophet containing the within TRAINRMSE. [NOTE You need to make forecasts for GuyLine to obtain the RMSE and for Parts d)f), but you are not asked to provide graphs for GuyLine.]

Label this table as Table 1 and provide a detailedcaption that distinguishes it from d).

[4 marks]

1. Make calculations of TESTRMSE using Excel and construct a 2 by 2 table with rows BarrelWave, GuyLine, and columns HW, Prophet containing theTESTRMSE.  Label this as Table 2 and provide a detailed caption that distinguishes it from the table in c). 

[4 marks – subject to submission of your TEST Excel file.]

1. Comment briefly on the RMSEs in Tables 1,2.

[3 marks]

1. Make calculations in Excel, or otherwise, find the MASE using Prophet in the TEST series for GuyLine. The mean absolute scaled error (MASE) is the ratio of the MAE using Prophet to the MAE using a modified naïve forecast, suitable for highly seasonal time series when seasonal variation dominates any trend: the naïve forecast for January 2023 sales is January 2022 sales,the naïve forecast for February 2023 sales is February 2022 sales, and so on until the naïve forecast for December 2023sales is the December 2022 sales. Comment on your MASE value.

[3 marks]