Consider Figure 8.5, which shows pa

Consider Figure 8.5, which shows patient arrivals at a medical clinic over the past 28 weeks. Assuming that the time series has only a horizontal and random pattern, one approach is simply to calculate the average of the data. However, this approach has no adaptive quality if there is a trend, seasonal,or cyclical pattern. The statistical techniques that do have an adaptive quality in estimating the average in a time series are (1) simple moving averages, (2) weighted moving averages, and (3) exponential smoothing. Another option is the simple average, but it has no adaptive capability.