Powerful Forecasting With MS Excel

by Joe Choong

Forecasting has become very important to all business enterprises and individual as well. This book provides readers with the tools to analyze their data, develop forecasting models and present the results in Excel.

Step-by-step development of the forecasting techniques are presented in a clear, simple and straightforward style. The essential text covers techniques that include but not limited to time series moving average, exponential smoothing, Box-Jenkins (ARIMA), Monte Carlo simulation, neural network, K Nearest Neighbors and so on. And unlike other books of its kind that require either high-priced statistical software or Excel add-ins, this book does not require such software. It can be used both as a primary text and as a supplementary text. Apart from that

Only minimal mathematic knowledge is require

Lots of Excel spreadsheet examples

Provides a wide range of proven methodologies

Includes both time series and causal models

This book is also ideal for a small business owner or someone who may not have the budget for expensive analytical tools such as SAS or SPSS. If you are building your forecast based on time series analysis or independent variables, then this book will be perfect for you.

The chapter

Chapter 1: Basic Forecasting Methods

Moving Average

Exponential Smoothing

Holts Method

Holts Winters

Chapter 2: ARIMA / Box Jenkins

Arima Modeling

Subjective Method

Objective Method

Chapter 3: Monte Carlo Simulation

Example 1: Coin Tossing

Example 2: Sales Forecasting

Example 3: Modeling Stock Prices

Chapter 4: K Nearest Neighbors

Example 1: KNN for classification

Example 2: KNN for time series prediction

Example 3: Cross Validation With MSE

Chapter 5: Neural Network With MS Excel

Example 1: Credit Approval Model

Example 2: Sales Forecasting

Example 3: Predicting Stock Prices (DJIA)

Example 4: Predicting Real Estate Value

Example 5: Classify Type Of Flowers

The objective of this book is to provide the reader with the tools to analyze data and produce forecasts in MS Excel. Written in a simple, straightforward style, Powerful Forecasting With MS Excel presents basic statistical techniques using practical business examples to teach readers how to predict short, medium and long-term forecasts.

Each chapter explores a specific forecasting topic and takes you forward into more advanced areas until you are able to understand powerful forecasting using Excel spreadsheet.

Once you are comfortable with the practicalities of using the spreadsheet models then perhaps you can simply tailor one of the preexisting spreadsheets for your own use. However, if you need to develop your own unique model then you will find that this book has the materials that you can reference to build one on your own. Assuming little prior knowledge, this informal text is a great companion for those who have not studied forecasting in depth before. This book truly promotes self-study as readers are encouraged to tackle problems as they go along and can see fully worked examples to help their understanding. Both beginners and more advanced students will find material in this book relevant to their needs. The book you will read once, and refer to over and over again!

383 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2012