Comparative Study on Exponentially Weighted Moving Average Approaches for the Self-Starting Forecasting

Abstract

Recently, a number of data analysists have suffered from an insufficiency of historical observations in many real situations. To address the insufficiency of historical observations, self-starting forecasting process can be used. A self-starting forecasting process continuously updates the base models as new observations are newly recorded, and it helps to cope with inaccurate prediction caused by the insufficiency of historical observations. This study compared the properties of several exponentially weighted moving average methods as base models for the self-starting forecasting process. Exponentially weighted moving average methods are the most widely used forecasting techniques because of their superior performance as well as computational efficiency. In this study, we compared the performance of a self-starting forecasting process using different existing exponentially weighted moving average methods under various simulation scenarios and real case datasets. Through this study, we can provide the guideline for determining which exponentially weighted moving average method works best for the self-starting forecasting process.