EC313 Business and Financial Forecasting
J. James Reade
21/04/2015
What do you want to forecast?
- The election outcome?
- 2015Q1 GDP growth?
- Reading’s game against Birmingham tomorrow night?
- They have a 39% chance of winning.
- Chelsea to win the Premiership? QPR to be relegated?
- 99.8% chance for Chelsea, 79% chance for QPR.
What is the module?
- Theory: Forecasting.
- Practice: R programming language.
- Putting in practice: Project to forecast variable of your choice.
- Presentation 10%.
- Final project 40%.
What do you need to put in?
- If you want an easy few credits, to cruise a module, this is not for you.
- The course is hard, and conceptually demanding (forecasting is not econometrics).
- If you are prepared to put in the extra effort to master skills that will help you in all areas of life, sign up.
- Hard work, but well worth it…
What do you get out of it?
- Practical skills in a well known and widely used computer programming language.
- Experience finding, downloading and processing data for analysis.
- Loads of experience implementing forecast models.
What did students forecast this year?
- The general election outcome.
- Running times for half marathons (plus fundraising).
- Opening weekend takings for movies.
- Gold prices.
- Eurovision song contest winner.
- Premiership (football) winner/top 4.
- IPL winner.
- Formula 1 winner.