Forecasting Methods Report: Forecasting Plantation Forest in Australia

This report presents an analysis of forecasting methods applied to plantation forest data in Australia. The study employs three primary forecasting techniques: Moving Average (MA), Weighted Moving Average (WMA), and Linear Regression. The report calculates forecasts for the plantation forest for January 2013 using each method and evaluates their accuracy by computing Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD), Mean Squared Error (MSE), and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). The results indicate that the regression model provided the most accurate forecasts based on the error metrics. The report provides detailed calculations and comparisons, offering insights into the strengths and weaknesses of each forecasting approach, and concludes with a recommendation for the most effective method for this dataset. The data used was collected from January 2012 to December 2012 on a monthly basis.