ABSTRACT
All businesses and organizations do forecasting. From roadside vendors and peddlers to major airlines and hotels as well as drug manufacturers and governments, all try to forecast for the next several years to plan and optimize their output, maximize profits and minimize losses, plan for manpower resources and overall smoothly run their businesses. Of course, forecasting methods are not the same for small retailers and pharmaceuticals running drug trials all over the world. In fact, in many cases, even sizable organizations do not employ statistical methods for forecasting, but go by their gut feeling or at best employ naive methods.
