Advantages of the MAD/Mean Ratio over the MAPE

Stephan Kolassa and Wolfgang Schütz provide a careful look at the ratio MAD/Mean, which has been proposed as a substitute metric for the MAPE in the case of intermittent demand series. They explain how MAD/Mean can be viewed as a weighted mean of absolute percentage errors and thus as a weighted alternative to MAPE. They describe several advantages of MAD/Mean to the MAPE including applicability to inventory decisions, absence of bias in method selection, and suitability for series with intermittent as well as near-zero demands. Copyright International Institute of Forecasters, 2007