Advanced Business Statistics

Problem:  Your county development officer has asked you to develop a forecast for unemployment.  He is especially interested in whether he can advertise the county as one that has recovered quickly from the recession. You may select or will be assigned to a county of interest in the USA.  You will need to collect annual data on unemployment for at least 11 years. Your goal is to develop a forecast for 3 periods ahead.  Reserve (do not use in building the models) the most current data point from the original data so that you can compare your forecast to actual data; in other words, use all data collected except your most recent data point in developing your best forecast model.

You may want to supplement your findings with other economic facts about the county or city you have chosen.

Data collection:

Unemployment data can be obtained at http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?la

Executive summary (1 page)          

1)      Statement of problem

2)      Results

3)      Recommendations

4)      Limitations

  • Graphs and tables should be referred to in text of summary.
  • Be concise
  • Expectations: well developed paragraphs using concise language; graphs and tables used to advantage making explanation easier

Evidence (appendix):

  • Explain your thinking about what models to be used and explain how those were chosen
  • Try all appropriate models…show all work in the appendix with interpretations for each output presented below or beside each Minitab output….explain how you chose your best model
  • Show Minitab work for forecasts for each model even those that are not the best
  • Compare your best model’s forecast to actual data

Other economic indicators and their values for the county of interest

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