The actual number of patients at Providence Emergency Medical Clinic for the first six weeks of this year follows:

Week	Actual No. of Patients
1	45
2	49
3	57
4	40
5	46
6	53

Clinic administrator Dana Schniederjans wants you to forecast patient numbers at the clinic for week 7 by using this data. You decide to use a weighted moving average method to find this forecast. Your method uses four actual demand levels, with weights of

0.333

on the present period,

0.250

one period ago,

0.250

two periods ago, and

0.167

three periods ago.

a) What is the value of your forecast?

The value of the forecast is

48.6748.67

patients (round your response to two decimal places).

b) If instead the weights were

20,

15,

15,

and

10,

respectively, how would the forecast change?

A.

The value of the forecast will remain the same.

This is the correct answer.

B.

The value of the forecast will decrease.

Your answer is not correct.

C.

The value of the forecast will increase.

c) What if the weights were

0.40,

0.30,

0.20,

and

0.10,

respectively? Now what is the forecast for week 7?

The value of the forecast is

nothing

patients (round your response to two decimal places).