Hello Excel community-thank you for your time and help. I did a forecast for population and the first figure it forecasted was decreased by almost 2%. Is that normal? There were 2 years in the historical data where the population figures decreased. The rest of the forecasted figures were normal.
Alan - The URL at the bottom of this message is a good place to start on your forecast math journey. The different forecast functions are described and there is a workbook with examples. I noodled with some existing data and I could change enough data points to force the first period of forecast data be less than the last period of actual but I didn't dig deep enough to understand the math (lunch break is over). Good Luck!
