Catherine Hood Consulting

Welcome to the second quarter 2013 newsletter from Catherine Hood Consulting.

X-13ARIMA-SEATS

After the public release of X-13ARIMA-SEATS at the beginning of 2013, Catherine Hood Consulting has been busy helping people download and research the new program. As a result, we've updated several pages on the site and added several new pages and new documents.

As a reminder, the biggest advance in X-13 is the capability to generate ARIMA-model-based seasonal adjustment using a version of the SEATS procedure originally developed by Agustin Maravall at the Bank of Spain. All the original capabilities of X-12 are still in the program, including the non-parametric adjustments from the X-11 procedure, regARIMA modeling, and all the diagnostics.

So is there a need to switch to X-13 soon? For most of you, probably not. If you are interested in learning more about ARIMA-model-based (AMB) adjustments, and if you are already an X-12 user, then X-13 has a much shorter learning curve than switching to TRAMO/SEATS. Of course, sometime in the distant future, the Census Bureau will probably stop supporting X-12, and then switching to X-13 would be important. On the other hand, for the most part, most X-12 specs will run in X-13, so switching would be fairly simple for most users.

If you have more questions about this issue, we'd be happy to discuss your current seasonal adjustment processes in light of the new program. We've also posted some information about X-13 on the seasonal adjustment FAQ.

Welcome, Miriam!

Business is booming at Catherine Hood Consulting, and for those of you waiting on new software and web courses, you know that we don't always have time for these types of projects. So we've hired a summer intern to help us finish the "Running X-12 Web Course" and get a jump-start on the "Running X-13 Web Course" as well. Miriam is a rising junior at the University of Alabama Birmingham where she is a mathematics (statistics) major and an archaeology minor. She has been running X-12-ARIMA for years as an unofficial assistant at Catherine Hood Consulting. Yes, Miriam Hood is Catherine's daughter. It might seem that Catherine is a bit biased in her hiring, and it certainly doesn't hurt that she can commute to work with her mother, but it's also very useful to have someone who has been involved with the web courses from the beginning, and someone who also sounds quite a bit like Catherine when the audio files need correcting. We are hopeful that with Miriam's help, we'll have the X-12 course ready for beta-testing before the end of the summer. We hope to have the X-13 course on-line shortly thereafter.

A personal note

This quarter has brought a change for Catherine -- her middle daughter, Naomi, joined the United States Air Force and left for Basic Military Training in April. Soon it will be time for the United States to celebrate our Independence Day, and as usual, those of us at Catherine Hood Consulting will take some time off for the holiday. This year, not only will Catherine and Roxanne get to spend some time together in Texas, but Catherine, Miriam, and her youngest daughter, Esther, will also celebrate the holiday with Airman Naomi Hood at Lackland Air Force Base. We are very proud of Naomi.

Comments?

Comments and suggestions are welcome. Please email "info" at catherinechhood.net with your ideas.