Exponential smoothing technique, simple exponential smoothing,
The simple moving average has the undesirable property that the last K observations are treated equally and all previous observations are totally ignored. Instinctively, previous information should be more gradually discounted. As the observations get older, the exponential smoothing assigns exponentially decreasing weights. In other words, in forecasting, latest observations are provided comparatively more weights than older observations. The latest observation, for instance, should have a little more weight than the recent 2nd and the 2nd recent observation should have a little more weight than the 3rd recent value and so on.