RE: st: Forecasting with montly data

[Cameron McIntosh <cnm100@hotmail.com>]

Hi Lisa,
Well, as the simplest method, you could just extrapolate from the existing trend, say by regressing visits on time to get average monthly change and then away you go with your six-month prediction of the state of the world. But that's pretty crude. I'm assuming, though, that you also have some (time-stable and time-varying) covariates that you could use to model the trend -- that would help in building a more complex prediction model. Do you also have some other aggregate outcomes that you could model as co-evolving with doctor visits? Too bad you don't have individual-level data, as a microsimulation would be a useful approach (following a statistical model to get parameter estimates). 
Anyway, take a look at:

Yaffee, R.A. (2007). Stata 10 (Time Series and Forecasting). Journal of Statistical Software, 23, Software Review 1.http://www.jstatsoft.org/v23/s01/paper

Yaffee's book on the subject is also soon to be available:

http://www.amazon.ca/Introduction-Forecasting-Time-Using-Stata/dp/1597180157

Cam

> Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2012 06:52:43 -0800
> From: lisa_owen100@yahoo.ca
> Subject: st: Forecasting with montly data
> To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> 
> Dear Statalist,
> Happy new year. I have montly aggregate data for total number of doctor visits in a district for 12 months. I want to use this data to forecast what the number of visits will be in the next 6 months, if possibe make a monthly prediction for each month with update.
> Please can somebody suggest what is the appropriate method of doing this in stata.
> Thanks 
> Lisa Owen
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