The following time series shows the sales of a particular product over the past 12 months.

a. Construct a time series plot. What type of pattern exists in the data?

b. Use α .3 to compute the exponential smoothing forecasts for the time series.

c. Use a smoothing constant of α .5 to compute the exponential smoothing forecasts.
Does a smoothing constant of .3 or .5 appear to provide more accurate forecasts based on MSE?