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Forecasting is a crucial step in almost all scientific research and is essential in many areas of industrial, commercial, clinical and economic activity. There are many forecasting methods in the literature; but exponential smoothing stands out due to its simplicity and accuracy. Despite the facts that exponential smoothing is widely used and has been in the literature for a long time, it suffers from some problems that potentially affect the model's forecast accuracy. An alternative forecasting framework, called Ata, was recently proposed to overcome these problems and to provide improved forecasts. In this study, the forecast accuracy of Ata and exponential smoothing will be compared among data sets with no or linear trend. The results of this study are obtained using simulated data sets with different sample sizes, variances. Forecast errors are compared within both short and long term forecasting horizons. The results show that the proposed approach outperforms exponential smoothing for both types of time series data when forecasting the near and distant future. The methods are implemented on the U.S. annualized monthly interest rates for services data and their forecasting performance are also compared for this data set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Falling is an important health problem for older men. In this study, we aim to identify factors that increase risk of falling in only older men using four different fall risk assessment methods. Method: 334 men, who attended a geriatric outpatient clinic and underwent comprehensive geriatric assessment, were included in the study. History of falling last year, the Timed Up and Go test, Performance-Oriented Mobility Assessment, and 4-meter walking speed test were carried out on all patients. Results: The mean age (SD) of patients were 74.99 (7.26) years. According to all of the four clinical assessments to predict risk of falling the following risk factors for falling were identified (all p <.05): cerebrovascular disease, urinary incontinence, dizziness and imbalance, high Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) scores, low Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and The Lawton-Brody Instrumental Daily Living Activity Scale (IADL) and Barthel index (BI) for daily living activities scores, Significant correlations were found between all the assessment methods (p <.001). Conclusion: There is a strong relationship between fall risk and cerebrovascular disease, urinary incontinence, dizziness and imbalance, high GDS scores, low MMSE, BADL and IADL scores in older men. Therefore, older men should be screened for these risk factors to prevent falls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]