On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, MARK LEEDS wrote: > you would have to take your series, y_1, ... y_t and run it over various > values of alpha ( say zero to 1 insteps of .01 ) and see which one gives say > the least MSE. > but that will be the optimal alpha for the window you are looking at. it > doesn't mean it will be the optimal apha for the data you deal with > at y_t+1,..... y_t+n. > > it's been a while, but , in holt winters, i think there are 3 smoothing > constants so i would think you would want to optimize over all 3 of them ? > > someone else can give the following in more detail there is probably a way > to use nlmin or one of those optimization functions to find the optimal > smoothing constants but i > don't think it's worth the hassle because they are in a small enough range > that you can do it by brute force as above. >
Or you could read the documentation for HoltWinters The function tries to find the optimal values of alpha and/or beta and/or gamma by minimizing the squared one-step prediction error if they are omitted. If you want to know how the optimization is done, looking at the code will tell you. -thomas ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.