Answer the following questions using the data from the Excel file Great Smoky Mountain.xlsx from Problem 16.47.

The Great Smoky Mountain National Park on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina is America’s most popular national park with more than nine million visitors each year. Suppose the National Park Service would like to forecast the number of visitors to this park in 2018. The Excel file Great Smoky Mountain.xlsx contains the number of visitors each year, in millions, to this park from 2002 until 2017.

a. Using a four-period simple moving average, forecast the number of visitors each year visiting the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in 2018.

b. Calculate the MAD for the forecast in part a.

c. Using exponential smoothing with α = 0.7, forecast the number of visitors each year visiting the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in 2018.

d. Calculate the MAD for the forecast in part c.

e. Which forecast do you have most confidence in?