# How to select between Holt Winters Model and ARIMA

I need to do sales forecasting.My historical data shows stationary pattern & present of trend,Seasonality & cyclic pattern. I would like to check with you that how to select between Holt Winters and ARIMA to decide the method to be used for future prediction?

Thanks

• The Holt Winter's forecasting method is simple exponential smoothing which is a special case of ARIMA models, namely the IMA(0,1,1) model. – Michael Chernick Feb 14 '17 at 14:20
• To be more precise, I would say either ARIMA(0,1,1) or IMA(1,1) since the zero in IMA(0,1,1) indexes the AR order that is excluded from the model name. R Learner, check also earlier threads on the subject; similar questions have been asked before. E.g. this would be a duplicate, but it does not have a good answer. Hmm, so probably we still need an answer to this one. – Richard Hardy Feb 14 '17 at 19:45
• @RichardHardy: do you want to post your comment(s) as an answer? Better to have a short answer than no answer at all. Anyone who has a better answer can post it. – S. Kolassa - Reinstate Monica Sep 18 at 11:33
• @StephanKolassa, I do not think my comment constitutes an answer to the actual question (about model selection for forecasting). Rather, it is more of a clarification regarding terminology. – Richard Hardy Sep 18 at 11:46
• @RichardHardy: I think it's as close as we will get to an answer to this question... I'll post a short answer. – S. Kolassa - Reinstate Monica Sep 18 at 11:50

• @RichardHardy: yes, it depends on whether auto.arima() (or whatever) actually chooses an ARIMA model that is equivalent to a smoothing one. I still think that there is little to choose between them in terms of forecasting accuracy. To be honest, in sales forecasting, data cleansing and correct modeling of demand drivers is usually far more important than choosing between ARIMA and Smoothing. – S. Kolassa - Reinstate Monica Sep 18 at 12:30