Thanks Bill and Jerry,

Do you know of any other Functions I can use to accomplish what I a m trying
to do?
--
Mike


"Jerry W. Lewis" wrote:

TREND, like LINEST, fits models that are linear in the unknown
coefficients (such as polynomials, multiple regression, etc.). Excel's
help is extremely misleading on both functions.

Beyond that, it is hard to help the OP, since he has not revealed what
values exist in most of the cells he has referred to.

Jerry

Bill Martin -- (Remove NOSPAM from address) wrote:

Mike wrote:

I am trying to €˜FORECAST or €˜TREND a series and neither function
appears to be working as I would expect. For example, I have the
following series: 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3 and I want to FORECAST or
TREND the next 5 periods.
When I use the FORECAST (=FORECAST(M$1,$A10:L10,$A$1:L$1)) function, I
get: 2.4, 2.4, 2.5, 2.5, 2.6

When I use the TREND (=TREND($A4:L4,$A$1:L$1)) Function, I get: 1.7,
2.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.3

I would expect to get 1,2,3,1,2, for both functions.

Anyone know what I am doing wrong or if I should be using another
function.

Thanks

-----------------------

From Excel's help system you can read what these functions do. If you
look there you'll see that they simply do linear extrapolation. So you
give it sawtooth data, it fits a straight line through the points and
you get what Excel's giving you.

What you say you expect to get would require some intelligence in the
software, not a simple linear fit. For example you might program the
system to always produce a high order periodic waveform and the program
could determine the constants that fit that curve to your data. Much
more involved.

Bill