In this course we will introduce you to different methods for forecasting future events. While the topic of forecasting can be applied to many business and non-business domains, much of the discussion will focus on making financial forecasts.

We will briefly review subjective forecasting methods and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of such approaches so that you have a better appreciation for empirical forecasting methods. We will then introduce you to time-series data, and why that type of data is useful for financial analytics.

The remainder of the course will focus on how to evaluate forecasts and forecasting models. We will conclude by introducing you to linear regression, a statistical technique for creating a linear function that can be used to make forecasts.