Forecasting accuracy of behavioural models for participation in the arts

This paper assesses the forecasting performance of count data models applied to arts attendance. We estimate participation models for two artistic activities that differ in their degree of popularity – museums and jazz concerts – with data derived from the 2002 release of the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts for the United States. We estimate a finite mixture model – a zero-inflated negative binomial model – that allows us to distinguish between “true” non-attendants and “goers” and their respective behaviour regarding participation in the arts. We evaluate the predictive (in-sample) and forecasting (out-of-sample) accuracy of the estimated model using bootstrapping techniques to compute the Brier score. Overall, the results indicate the model performs well in terms of forecasting. Finally, we draw certain policy implications from the model’s forecasting capacity, thereby allowing the identification of target populations.     

Simultaneous engineering approach to an integrated design and process planning

To support integration of design and process planning, a reference model has been developed. This reference model represents the basis for a new methodology for integrated design and process planning which enables a Simultaneous Engineering approach in the early stages of product development. The reference model consists of four partial models. These are the activity model, the information model, the technical system model and the model of integrating methods. Using these models, the methodology enables a concurrent processing of design and process planning activities with regard to different components of a product. Furthermore, the methodology covers planning methods as well as execution methods, to support early transmission of information to downstream activities and a feedback of information to upstream activities within the process chain of design and process planning.     

Multivariate dynamic modeling for Bayesian forecasting of business revenue

Forecasting enterprise-wide revenue is critical to many companies and presents several challenges and opportunities for significant business impact. This case study is based on model developments to address these challenges for forecasting in a large-scale retail company. Focused on multivariate revenue forecasting across collections of supermarkets and product categories, hierarchical dynamic models are natural: these are able to couple revenue streams in an integrated forecasting model, while allowing conditional decoupling to enable relevant and sensitive analysis together with scalable computation. Structured models exploit multi-scale modeling to cascade information on price and promotion activities as predictors relevant across categories and groups of stores. With a context-relevant focus on forecasting revenue 12 weeks ahead, the study highlights product categories that benefit from multi-scale information, defines insights into when, how, and why multivariate models improve forecast accuracy, and shows how cross-category dependencies can relate to promotion decisions in one category impacting others. Bayesian modeling developments underlying the case study are accessible in custom code for interested readers.     

Optimal adjustment of manpower-requirement forecasts: A case study of Iran

The manpower forecasting models are frequently used in development planning. The usual approach in these models is to correlate the manpower requirement with the level of economic activities and to declare the forecasted figures as the educational targets of the development plan. In this paper we show that because of uncertainties involved in these forecasts, and due to the lack of a cost consideration mechanism in the above models, the implementation of such an educational plan causes an inefficiency in the society's allocation of resources. We then derive an adjustment rule which modifies the manpower-requirement forecasts based on balancing the trade-offs between the cost of educational and the degree of target realization.For demonstration purposes, we apply the above rule to the case of Iran and, through this application, we introduce a methodology for analyzing the sensitivity of results to different types of errors contained in the manpower-requirement forecasts.     

基于分解—集成的铁路货运需求预测研究

铁路货运量受到多种因素影响,准确的预测可以为铁路行业未来规划的编制提供重要的参考依据,也可以使铁路部门制定符合当前货运市场的运输政策。货运量数据具有非线性、不平稳的特点,利用传统的单一预测模型进行预测,很难描述整体特征,预测精度有待提高。本文基于分解—集成的原则,利用变分模态分解算法将货运量分解为高频和低频模态,针对各模态特点,分别建立预测模型,将得到的预测结果加总起来作为最终货运量的预测值。实证表明,分解—集成预测方法与传统的单一预测模型相比,提高了预测的准确率,可以很好地应用在铁路货运量需求预测的研究中。     

宏观经济预测模型体系研究

针对我国宏观经济管理的实际需要,以国家和地区宏观经济中长期预测和规划为研究目的,本建立了一个以投入产出模型和人工神经网络模型为核心,结合使用最优化技术的宏观经济预测模型体系,该预测模型体系已应用于某市“十五”时期的宏观经济指标测算中,预测结果已被政府计划部门在研究制定“十五”计划时采用。     

大数据背景下的商品需求预测与分仓规划

商品需求预测对于电商企业意义重大,对阿里电商平台的交易数据进行挖掘以获取有效特征,利用特征建立模型对未来两周这些商品的需求进行动态预测,并基于预测结果和成本最小的原则提出分仓规划建议.预测模型选择随机森林做回归,然后在残差分析的基础上建立报童模型求解分仓的库存规划.对特征数量众多的电商交易数据挖掘所建立的模型有助于电商企业进行有效的商品需求预测并据此制定成本更低的分仓规划.     

Discrete grey forecasting model and its optimization

Although the grey forecasting model has been successfully adopted in various fields and demonstrated promising results, the literatures show its performance could be further improved. For this purpose, this paper proposes a novel discrete grey forecasting model termed DGM model and a series of optimized models of DGM. This paper modifies the algorithm of GM(1, 1) model to enhance the tendency catching ability. The relationship between the two models and the forecasting precision of DGM model based on the pure index sequence is discussed. And further studies on three basic forms and three optimized forms of DGM model are also discussed. As shown in the results, the proposed model and its optimized models can increase the prediction accuracy. When the system is stable approximately, DGM model and the optimized models can effectively predict the developing system. This work contributes significantly to improve grey forecasting theory and proposes more novel grey forecasting models.     

Forecasting model with asymmetric market response and its application to pricing of consumer package goods

This paper presents a dynamic forecasting model that accommodates asymmetric market responses to marketing mix variable—price promotion—by threshold models. As a threshold variable to generate a mechanism for different market responses, we use the counterpart to the concept of a price threshold applied to a representative consumer in a store. A Bayesian approach is taken for statistical modelling because of advantages that it offers over estimation and forecasting. The proposed model incorporates the lagged effects of a price variable. Thereby, myriad pricing strategies can be implemented in the time horizon. Their effectiveness can be evaluated using the predictive density. We intend to improve the forecasting performance over conventional linear time series models. Furthermore, we discuss efficient dynamic pricing in a store using strategic simulations under some scenarios suggested by an estimated structure of the models. Empirical studies illustrate the superior forecasting performance of our model against conventional linear models in terms of the root mean square error of the forecasts. Useful information for dynamic pricing is derived from its structural parameter estimates. This paper develops a dynamic forecasting model that accommodates asymmetric market responses to marketing mix variable—price promotion—by the threshold models. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Application of seasonal SVR with chaotic gravitational search algorithm in electricity forecasting

Hybridization chaotic mapping functions with optimization algorithms into a support vector regression model has been shown its efficient potential to avoid converging prematurely. It is deserved to explore more possibility by hybridizing with other optimization algorithms. Electricity demand sometimes demonstrates a seasonal tendency due to complicate economic activities or climate cyclic nature. This investigation presents a SVR-based electricity forecasting model which applied a novel hybrid algorithm, namely chaotic gravitational search algorithm (CGSA), to improve the forecasting performance. The proposed CGSA employs the chaotic local search by logistic chaotic mapping function in the iteration of the original GSA to search and refine the current best solution. In addition, seasonal mechanism is also applied to deal with seasonal electricity tendency. A numerical example from an existed reference is used to illustrate the forecasting performance of the proposed SSVRCGSA model. The forecasting results indicate that the proposed model yields more accurate forecasting results than ARIMA and TF-ε-SVR-SA models.     

A mega-trend-diffusion grey forecasting model for short-term manufacturing demand

Accurate short-term demand forecasting is critical for developing effective production plans; however, a short forecasting period indicates that the product demands are unstable, rendering tracking of product development trends difficult. Determining the actual developing data patterns by using forecasting models generated using historical observations is difficult, and the forecasting performance of such models is unfavourable, whereas using the latest limited data for forecasting can improve management efficiency and maintain the competitive advantages of an enterprise. To solve forecasting problems related to a small data set, this study applied an adaptive grey model for forecasting short-term manufacturing demand. Experiments involving the monthly demand data for thin film transistor liquid crystal display panels and wafer-level chip-scale packaging process data showed that the proposed grey model produced favourable forecasting results, indicating its appropriateness as a short-term forecasting tool for small data sets.     

Mittelfristige Produktionsplanung bei ungewissen Szenarien

In medium term production planning at a highly aggregated level the uncertainty about future demand plays a central role. A widely used method to take the uncertainty into account is to investigate the same model with different scenarios. This approach produces only suboptimal results. In the first part of this paper some principles of optimality are formulated where forecasting is incorporated and future scenarios are treated as a stochastic process. The resulting models are of the type of a Markovian decision process. They have the property of actualization of forecasts (adaption), of looking ahead production smoothing (anticipation) and of efficient risk balancing. The different models are formulated in view of some typical situations occuring in practice. As a byproduct it is shown that the separation of long term forecasting and short term production planning may be disadvantageous. The theory developed so far will then be applied to a concrete situation in the automotive industriy. In particular the problem investigated is how to control the production rate throughout an imminent period of recession of unknown severity and duration. The computational results demonstrate that the model with a stochastic scenario yields smoother production lines than the model with a fixed scenario. This is due to an additional cost minimizing inertia caused by the stochastic law of motion.     

A novel two-factor forecasting model for fuzzy time series

The study of fuzzy time series has increasingly attracted much attention due to its salient capabilities of tackling vague and incomplete data. A variety of forecasting models have devoted to improving forecasting accuracy, however, the issue of partitioning intervals has rarely been investigated. Recently, we proposed a novel deterministic forecasting model to eliminate the major overhead of determining the k-order issue in high-order models. This paper presents a continued work with focusing on handling the interval partitioning issue by applying the fuzzy c-means technology, which can take the distribution of data points into account and produce unequal-sized intervals. In addition, the forecasting model is extended to allow process twofactor problems. The accuracy superiority of the proposed model is demonstrated by conducting two empirical experiments and comparison to other existing models. The reliability of the forecasting model is further justified by using a Monte Carlo simulation and box plots. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Tactical sales forecasting using a very large set of macroeconomic indicators

Tactical forecasting in supply chain management supports planning for inventory, scheduling production, and raw material purchase, amongst other functions. It typically refers to forecasts up to 12 months ahead. Traditional forecasting models take into account univariate information extrapolating from the past, but cannot anticipate macroeconomic events, such as steep increases or declines in national economic activity. In practice this is countered by using managerial expert judgement, which is well known to suffer from various biases, is expensive and not scalable. This paper evaluates multiple approaches to improve tactical sales forecasting using macro-economic leading indicators. The proposed statistical forecast selects automatically both the type of leading indicators, as well as the order of the lead for each of the selected indicators. However as the future values of the leading indicators are unknown an additional uncertainty is introduced. This uncertainty is controlled in our methodology by restricting inputs to an unconditional forecasting setup. We compare this with the conditional setup, where future indicator values are assumed to be known and assess the theoretical loss of forecast accuracy. We also evaluate purely statistical model building against judgement aided models, where potential leading indicators are pre-filtered by experts, quantifying the accuracy-cost trade-off. The proposed framework improves on forecasting accuracy over established time series benchmarks, while providing useful insights about the key leading indicators. We evaluate the proposed approach on a real case study and find 18.8% accuracy gains over the current forecasting process.     

A Performance evaluation of neural network models in traffic volume forecasting

Forecasting traffic volume is an important task in controlling urban highways, guiding drivers' routes, and providing real-time transportation information. Previous research on traffic volume forecasting has concentrated on a single forecasting model and has reported positive results, which has been frequently better than those of other models. In addition, many previous researchers have claimed that neural network models are better than linear statistical models in terms of prediction accuracy. However, the forecasting power of a single model is limited to the typical cases to which the model fits best. In other words, even though many research efforts have claimed the general superiority of a single model over others in predicting future events, we believe it depends on the data characteristics used, the composition of the training data, the model architecture, and the algorithm itself.In this paper, we have studied the relationship in forecasting traffic volume between data characteristics and the forecasting accuracy of different models, particularly neural network models. To compare and test the forecasting accuracy of the models, three different data sets of traffic volume were collected from interstate highways, intercity highways, and urban intersections. The data sets show very different characteristics in terms of volatility, period, and fluctuations as measured by the Hurst exponent, the correlation dimension. The data sets were tested using a back-propagation network model, a FIR model, and a time-delayed recurrent model.The test results show that the time-delayed recurrent model outperforms other models in forecasting very randomly moving data described by a low Hurst exponent. In contrast, the FIR model shows better forecasting accuracy than the time-delayed recurrent network for relatively regular periodic data described by a high Hurst exponent. The interpretation of these results shows that the feedback mechanism of the previous error, through the temporal learning technique in the time-delayed recurrent network, naturally absorbs the dynamic change of any underlying nonlinear movement. The FIR and back-propagation model, which have claimed a nonlinear learning mechanism, may not be very good in handling randomly fluctuating events.     

Simulation models to support the preliminary electoral results program for the Mexican Electoral Institute

On July 1st, 2018, federal elections for president, senators and deputies took place in Mexico. In most states, elections for state governors and representatives took also place in the same polling booths. The Technical Unit for Information Services (UNICOM) of the National Electoral Institute (INE) of Mexico has the responsibility for planning and implementation of the Preliminary Electoral Results Program (PREP) for federal elections. For the 2018 elections UNICOM developed forecasting models for the performance of PREP based on simulation models that were developed using a special purpose simulation software and C++ subroutines for fast simulation of queues. These simulation models were a valuable tool for planning, scheduling and allocation of the main resources that participated in the operational process of the PREP. In this article we report the main features, applications and results obtained by using these simulation models.

     

最佳灰色回归组合模型及其在中国火灾预测中的应用

火灾每年给国家和人民生命财产造成巨大损失.火灾现象具有随机性、模糊性,是个复杂的灰色系统行为.研究火灾发生规律及发展趋势,具有实用价值.为此,首先给出最小二乘估计(LSE)意义下的最佳组合预测模型的定义,并求得组合模型的权的公式和证明权的唯一性.其次,用回归分析方法建立多个回归模型,并按以下三条标准:①回归指数(或相关系数)r大、②系统误差s小、③模型精度p高,选定最佳非线性回归模型;用灰色理论建立多个灰色模型,并按以下三条标准:①后验差比值c小、②小误差概率P大、③预测关联度ξ大,选定最佳灰色模型;再用最小二乘法将最佳回归模型与最佳灰色模型有机地结合起来建立的中国火灾最佳灰色回归组合预测模型.最佳灰色回归组合预测模型综合利用前两者提供的不同的有用信息,改善了单一模型的局限性,提高了模型的预测精度,减少了预测误差,使预测效果更佳.组合模型预测中国年火灾起数处于动态增长过程.     

An integrated optimization model for managing the global value chain of a chemical commodities manufacturer

The realization of supply chain management concepts goes along with the introduction of comprehensive software systems for supporting decisions at the strategic, tactical, and operational planning level. Moreover, in industry the focus has shifted from a pure logistics-oriented view towards the integration of pricing and revenue issues into cross-functional value chain planning models. This paper presents a practical decision support tool for global value chain planning in the production of chemical commodities. The proposed linear optimization model consists of various modules that reflect sales, distribution, production, and procurement activities within a company-internal value chain. The objective of the model is to maximize profit by coordinating all activities within the supply chain. The model formulation is related to a real industry case. It is shown how the model can be used to support decision making from sales to procurement by volume and value.     

A dynamic logistics model for medical resources allocation in an epidemic control with demand forecast updating

This paper presents a dynamic logistics model for medical resources allocation that can be used to control an epidemic diffusion. It couples a forecasting mechanism, constructed for the demand of a medicine in the course of such epidemic diffusion, and a logistics planning system to satisfy the forecasted demand and minimize the total cost. The forecasting mechanism is a time discretized version of the Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered model that is widely employed in predicting the trajectory of an epidemic diffusion. The logistics planning system is formulated as a mixed 0–1 integer programming problem characterizing the decision making at various levels of hospitals, distribution centers, pharmaceutical plants, and the transportation in between them. The model is built as a closed-loop cycle, comprising forecast phase, planning phase, execution phase, and adjustment phase. The parameters of the forecast mechanism are adjusted in reflection of the real data collected in the execution phase by solving a quadratic programming problem. A numerical example is presented to verify efficiency of the model.