Since the Covid-19 outbreak, the use of sports facilities and venues has dropped significantly. You have a group of friends who are frequent visitors to a swimming pool and they are interested in understanding the impact of Covid-19 on the income of the swimming pool operator. Knowing that you have learned the knowledge related to making forecasts, your friends ask for your opinion on the following questions. Please use relevant data in the Excel workbook Q2_input_file.xlsx in Canvas (next to this question paper) to answer the following questions.

(a) Comment on the underlying pattern in the swimming pool attendances over 2016 1Q 2019 4Q. Please limit the answer to within one page. (10 marks)

(b) Use a suitable method to forecast the swimming pool attendances for every quarter between 2020 1Q and 2021 2Q, assuming that actual data in that range is not yet available. After that, combined with the actual data, estimate the income loss of the swimming pool for each quarter in that range, assuming that each attendance brings in income of $5 for the swimming pool. Please limit the answer to within two pages. (30 marks)

(c) Name another time series method that is suitable for forecasting the quarterly swimming pool attendances for Part (b) and briefly describe the steps. Then compare the method you used in Part (b) with this method: when the former is more appropriate; when the latter is more appropriate. You do not need to show any detailed calculations for Part (c). You can show general formulas for easy description.

Please limit the answer to within 300 words.

Variable	2016 1Q	2016 2Q	2016 3Q	2016 4Q	2017 1Q	2017 2Q	2017 3Q	2017 4Q	2018 1Q	2018 2Q	2018 3Q	2018 4Q	2019 1Q	2019 2Q	2019 3Q	2019 4Q	2020 1Q	2020 2Q	2020 3Q	2020 4Q	2021 1Q	2021 2Q
Swimming Pool Attendances	70,624	70,558	89,561	72,729	68,326	73,466	80,331	65,911	69,520	66,513	84,040	65,742	61,844	62,068	71,068	60,606	44,728	2,671	19,047	27,126	28,464	25,625