ECO 6214 : Module 3, Midterm Exam ...

Module 3, Midterm Exam

Attempt 1   Score for this quiz: 90 out of 120
Submitted Apr 6 at 7:16pm
This attempt took 32 minutes.

 
Question 1                                     10 / 10 pts
Under what circumstances may it make sense NOT to prepare a business forecast?
  

• No data is readily available.  
• There is no consensus among informed individuals.  
• The industry to forecast is undergoing dramatic change.  
• The future will be no different from the past.  
• The forecast horizon is 40 years.

 
Question 2                        5 / 5 pts
Which subjective forecasting method depends upon the anonymous opinion of a panel of individuals to generate sales forecasts?  

• None of the above.
• Sales Force Composites.
• Jury of Executive Opinion.
• Customer Surveys.
• Delphi Method.

 
Question 3                              5 / 5 pts
Which of the following is NOT considered a subjective forecasting method?

•   Consumer surveys.
•   Juries of executive opinion.
•   Sales force composites.
•   Naive methods.
•   Delphi methods.

 
Question 4             5 / 5 pts
Suppose you are attempting to forecast a variable that is independent over time such as stock rates of return. A potential candidate-forecasting model is
  

• The Delphi Method.  
• None of the above.  
• The Jury of Executive Opinion.  
• Last period’s actual rate of return.  
• Last period’s actual rate of return plus some proportion of the most recently observed rate of change in the series.

 
Question 5                               5 / 5 pts
Of the following model selection criteria, which is often the MOST important in determining the appropriate forecast method?

•  Technical background of the forecast user.
•  When is the forecast needed?
•  What is the forecast horizon?
•  Patterns the data have exhibited in the past.
•  How much money is in the forecast budget?

 
Question 6                 5 / 5 pts
Which time-series component is said to fluctuate around the long-term trend and is fairly irregular in appearance?

•   Cyclical.
•   Irregular.
•   None of the above.
•   Seasonal.
•   Trend.

 
Question 7                                      10 / 10 pts
For which data frequency is seasonality not a problem?

•   Annual.
•   Daily.
•   Monthly.
•   Weekly.
•   Quarterly.

 
Question 8                                            5 / 5 pts
When a time series contains no trend, it is said to be

•   nonseasonal.
•   seasonal.
•   nonstationary.
•   stationary.
•   filtered.

 
Question 9             10 / 10 pts
A large sample of X-Y data values are analyzed and reveal a correlation coefficient of-.88. Which statement is correct?

•   The correlation is weak because r is less than -1.
•   There is no relation. 
•   A weak negative relationship exists.
•   A fairly strong negative linear relationship exists. *
•    If r had been +.88, the correlation would have been much stronger.

 
Question 10                      10 / 10 pts
Which method uses an arithmetic mean to forecast the next period?

•   Exponential smoothing.
•   Adaptive filtering.
•   Moving averages.
•   None of the above
•   Naive.

 
Question 11                            10 / 10 pts

If a three-month moving-average model is used, what is the forecast for period 4?

•   107.1.
•   108.3.
•   110.2.
•    106.6.
•   104.4.

 
Question 12                      10 / 10 pts

If a smoothing constant of .3 is used, what is the exponentially smoothed forecast for period 3?

•   103.0.
•   106.6.
•   115.0.
•   104.4.
•   112.6.

 
Question 13                                     10 / 10 pts

The ACF for The Gap sales is shown above. There is clear evidence in the ACF that

•   Gap sales have fallen in the last 12 periods.
•   there is a strong trend in the data.
•   the data is too strongly correlated to identify trend.
•   the data is stationary.
•   there is no seasonality in the data.

 
Question 14                        10 / 10 pts
If the correlation between body weight and annual income were high and positive, we could conclude that

•   high incomes cause people to gain weight.
•   high income people tend to be heavier than low income people, on average.
•   low incomes cause people to eat less food.
•   high incomes cause people to eat more food.
•   high income people tend to spend a greater proportion of their income on food than low income people, on average.

 
Question 15                                  10 / 10 pts
In the Holt's two-parameter smoothing model, the trend smoothing parameter Gamma

•   should be close to one when α is one.
•   should be close to one when the data has a relatively smooth trend.
•   should be close to one when α is close to one.
•   should be close to zero when the data has a relatively smooth trend.