Ten weeks of data on the commodity Futures Index are 7.35, 7.40, 7.55, 7.56, 7.60, 7.52, 7.52, 7.70, 7.62 and 7.55.
a) Construct a times series plot. What type of pattern exists in the data?
b) Use trial and error to find a value of the exponential smoothing coefficient α that results in a relatively small MSE