Business Forecasting — Workbook

ECON 8310 · Labs and Assignments

Preface

The companion to the course book: the fourteen in-class labs and the eleven assignments, in one place you can search.

How to use it

The labs here are for reading, not running. Code is shown but not executed, so the workbook opens instantly. Each lab links to its executable version, which is the one to open beside your editor when you actually do the work.

Each step carries a collapsible Walkthrough — what was said about that step in class, including the numbers it produces. Open it when you are stuck or want to check your reading of a result; ignore it while you are still working the step out.

Every lab also ends with what your run should produce. Where a model is stochastic your numbers will differ, and several labs are entirely about how much they differ and what that means.

On the suggested time. Each lab opens with one — thirty-five to forty-five minutes. That is the pace of a classroom slot with an instructor on hand, not a target you are being measured against. Alone, expect longer: reading the walkthrough, re-running a cell, and looking something up all cost time that the number does not include. Nothing about this course is graded on speed.

The assignments

Reproduced as you receive them, with their prompt budgets and initial prompts. Solutions are not here and never will be — they are released separately, after each deadline.

A word on the numbers

Everything in this workbook is generated from the labs, the assignments and the class narration themselves, so a value quoted here cannot disagree with the lab that produced it. Where a number looks surprising, that is usually the point: a good deal of this course is about results that contradict what the method’s reputation would suggest.