Forecasting is an important part of decision malung, and many of our decisions are based on predictions of future unknown events. Many books on forecasting and time series analysis have been published recently. Some of them are introductory and just describe the various methods heuristically. Certain others are very theoretical and focus on only a few selected topics. This book is about the statistical methods and models that can be used to produce short-term forecasts. Our objective is to provide an intermediate level
discussion of a variety of statistical forecasting methods and models, to explain their interconnections, and to bridge the gap between theory and practice.