Predicting College Kids' Cravings Amid Special Causes

Michelle Paret, Product Marketing Manager, Minitab Inc., State College, PA, USA

Keywords: Prediction, Modeling, Special Cause Variation

Industry: Food/Drug/Cosmetic

Level: Basic

ABSTRACT

It’s not uncommon for sales dashboards to provide revenue figures for a given time period from last year to that same time period in the current year. For example, perhaps your dashboard compares sales figures from the third week of 2016 to sales figures for the third week in 2017. Perhaps your sales appear to up. Or, perhaps your sales appear to be down. But are they really? In this talk, we will take a look specifically at sandwich sales across three restaurant locations in a large college town and explore how to use statistical techniques to truly understand what the data are telling us. We will use modeling techniques to determine with factors impact customer demand. We will also take a look at how to use graphical techniques to identify what may be driving special cause variation, and understand seasonal fluctuations over time.