Forecasting Time Series

Dr. Marietta Tretter

Aim of Course:

This course will teach you how to choose an appropriate time series model, fit the model, to conduct diagnostics, and use the model for forecasting. The course will focus on Autoregressive (AR), Moving Average (MA), combined ARMA, ARIMA and Box Jenkins type models.

Who Should Take This Course:

Business analysts, sales forecasters, economists, financial analysts, anyone who needs to produce, interpret or assess forecasts will find this course useful. Participants should be familiar with basic statistics, including linear regression.

For those enrolled in Professional Advancement Programs, this is a required or elective course in the following Programs:

• Statistics in Business & Marketing - required
• Engineering Statistics - required

Course Program:

The course is structured as follows

The Instructor:

Dr. Marietta Tretter is Professor of Information and Operations Management at the Mays Business School at Texas A&M. She is the author of the best selling book How to Use the Internet, and her work has appeared in journals such as Management Science, Operations Research, Math Programming, and the Annals of Statistics. She teaches time series analysis at Texas A&M, and her research interests are in GIS, data mining, computational finance, neural networks, and software engineering.

Organization of the Course:

The course takes place over the internet, at statistics.com. During each course week, you participate at times of your own choosing - there are no set times when you must be online. Course participants will be given access to a private discussion board. In class discussions led by the instructor, you can post questions, seek clarification, and interact with your fellow students and the instructor. The course is scheduled to take place over 4 weeks, and typically requires 10-15 hours per week. At the beginning of each week, you receive the relevant material, in addition to answers to exercises from the previous session. During the week, you are expected to go over the course materials and work through exercises. Discussion among participants is encouraged. The instructor will provide answers and comments.

Certificates and Grades:

You may be interested only in learning the material presented, and not be concerned with grades or certificates. Or you may be enrolled in a statistics.com Professional Advancement Program that requires demonstration of proficiency in the subject, in which case your work will be assessed for purposes of issuing a grade. Or you may require only a "Certificate of Course Completion," along with professional development credit in the form of Continuing Education Units (CEU's). As you begin the class, you will be asked to specify your category.

Credit:

This course offers continuing education units (CEU's). For those successfully completing the course (generally this means marks of 50% or better on the homework), 5.0 CEU's and a certificate will be issued by statistics.com, upon request.

Dates:

Sep. 19 - Oct. 17, 2008
Mar. 20 - Apr. 17, 2009
Click here to be notified of future course offerings.

Participants gain access to the online materials on the first day of the course, and typically spend about 10-15 hours per week (at their convenience). You retain full access to course materials, including discussion board, for two weeks after the course closing date.

Level:

Intermediate

Prerequisite:

Familiarity with the basic principles of statistics, such as those covered in Basic Concepts in Probability and Statistics, Introduction to Statistics I, and Introduction to Statistics II. For additional information about course prerequisites, click here.

Course Text:

The required text for this course is Hanke and Wichern's 8th Edition of Business Forecasting and Student CD Package. This text may be purchased at Amazon.com by clicking here (a cheaper international version may also be available for students outside of the U.S.).

Software:

Participants will benefit from having access to software that can do time series analysis. Examples and illustrations will be provided for Minitab. Some examples, using XLMiner (an Excel add-in), will also be shown. For information about software that is available at no charge, or nominal charge, for statistics.com courses click here.

Registration:

Register Online - $449
Register Online (academic) - $349 (you must be affiliated with a college, university or high school)

Add $50 service fee if you require a prior invoice, or if you need to submit a purchase order or voucher, pay by wire transfer or EFT, or refund and reprocess a prior payment. Please use this printed registration form, for these and other special orders.

Note: Courses may fill up at any time and registrations are processed in the order in which they are received. Your registration will be confirmed for the first available course date, unless you specify otherwise.