New book: Principles of Business Forecasting
Published 23 August 2012
Principles of Business Forecasting, published in July 2012 by Cengage, is a new book by Lancaster University Management School's Robert Fildes and Keith Ord of Georgetown University.
Forecasting is important to almost all organisations, witness the problems encountered in the London 2012 Olympics. All too often it's a topic that gets too little serious attention, both in business and management courses and also within organisations where it is much needed. The Ord/Fildes book serves both as a textbook for students and as a reference book for experienced forecasters in the many fields where forecasting is applied.
The book introduces both standard and advanced forecasting methods and their underlying models, and also includes general principles to guide and simplify forecasting practice. The overall aim remains one of ensuring the techniques can be applied.
A key strength of the book is its emphasis on real data sets, taken from government and business sources and used in each chapter’s examples and exercises.
Forecasting techniques are demonstrated using a variety of software platforms and the companion website provides easy-to-use Excel® macros to support the basic methods.
After the introductory chapters, the focus shifts to using extrapolative methods (exponential smoothing and ARIMA) and then to statistical model-building using multiple regression. The authors also cover more advanced techniques including market response models and neural networks. Finally, they examine organisational issues of implementation and the development of a forecasting support system within an organisation.
Principles of Business Forecasting
Ord, J K. & Fildes, R. 2012, Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning. 528 p.
ISBN-10: 0324311273 US edition
ISBN10: 1-133-58440-3, ISBN13: 978-1-133-58440-7 International edition
Robert Fildes
Robert Fildes is Distinguished Professor of Management Science at Lancaster University Management School and Director of the Lancaster Centre for Forecasting. He was co-founder in 1981 of the Journal of Forecasting and in 1985 of the International Journal of Forecasting. For ten years from 1988 he was Editor-in-Chief of the IJF and remains an associate editor. He was president of the International Institute of Forecasters between 2000 and 2004. In 1976 he wrote one of the earliest business forecasting textbooks. Though long out-of-print, many of its core ideas have survived the test of time. Robert is a Fellow of the International Institute of Forecasters and of the Operational Research Society.
Keith Ord
Keith Ord is Sebes Fellow and Professor in the Operations and Information Management group at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He is a co-author of the 2008 research monograph Forecasting with Exponential Smoothing The State Space Approach and also co-authored Kendall's Advanced Theory of Statistics. He has served as an editor of the International Journal of Forecasting and is currently an associate editor, as well as being on the editorial boards of several other journals. Keith is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the International Institute of Forecasters.
