When we observe no clear trend or seasonality in the data, we can use either moving average or single exponential smoothing tools for forecasting.
The data we will use in this example are the GDP figures for the UK from 2009 to 2013. The data is provided for us in the GDP figures all.mtw
worksheet and is available in the code bundle; it contains data from 1955 to 2013. We will initially subset the data for results from 2009 onwards. Then, we will use quarterly growth percentage, comparing the results from both moving average and single exponential smoothing.
The data was originally obtained from the Guardian website and is available at
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2009/nov/25/gdp-uk-1948-growth-economy .