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Fri 26 Aug, 2005 01:01 pm
So I work at a retail store, and the way the company works, they determine how many hours are given to each store by the amount of sales that is predicted for this week. The higher number of sales, the higher number of hours = more workers.
the way that the company predict how much we will make this month is this: so lets say the company wants to forcast how much money they will make in the month of August 2005. They take the sales of August of 2002 + Sales of August 2003 and find the average. that average, is how much we are predicted to make in 2005
so maybe n = (n-2 + n-1)/2.
Being a math major, I was thinking, is this mathematically sound way to predict forcast?
Im sure there are statisticaly better way to predict forcast right? what would be a more accurate way to do it? Since I have access to old records(and have taken a number of statistics and math classes), I was wondering if it is possible for me to give a better prediction.
thanx guys
I think there is a seasonal component and a growth component. The seasonal component is determined by looking at how the monthly sales deviate from the yearly average. The growth component is computed by fitting some sort of curve to the annual sales numbers. By using August numbers of years past to predict August sales, the seasonal component is included in. Using data from a couple of years ago really misses out on the impact of growing or declining sales. For staffing, there is also a productivity component.
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