I want a best fit line to go pass through the obviously linear portion of the
data and ignore all other points, how do i do this?

To fit a line on an Excel plot to a portion of the data, you can use the trendline feature. Here are the steps:

1. Select the data points that you want to include in the trendline.
2. Right-click on one of the selected data points and choose "Add Trendline" from the context menu.
3. In the "Format Trendline" pane that appears on the right side of the screen, select the "Linear" option under "Trendline Options".
4. Under "Forecast", you can choose the number of periods to forecast into the future. Leave this at 0 if you don't need to forecast.
5. Under "Line", you can choose the color and style of the trendline.
6. Under "Options", you can choose to display the equation and R-squared value on the chart.
7. To limit the trendline to a portion of the data, you can use the "Set Intercept" and "Set Slope" options under "Customize Trendline".
8. Adjust the "Set Intercept" and "Set Slope" values until the trendline passes through the desired portion of the data.

By following these steps, you should be able to fit a best fit line to a portion of the data in Excel.

Hi,

Trend lines are based on all the data points in a series.
To get a trend line on a subset of data you will need to add a new series
based on only that subset.

Cheers
Andy
--

Andy Pope, Microsoft MVP - Excel
http://www.andypope.info
"mechengstudent" wrote in message
...
I want a best fit line to go pass through the obviously linear portion of
the
data and ignore all other points, how do i do this?

Hi,

If you want the chart to do this, then one way is to plot the "obvious
linear protion" as one series and the rest as another series and then select
the above portion and choose Chart, Add Trendline. You could also manually
calculate the trendline in the spreadsheet for the points that make up the
"obvious linear portion" using some combination of the LINEST, TREND, SLOPE
or INTERCEPT spreadsheet functions.

Then you would calculate and plot the trendline as a separate series. I
suspect you can find at least one example at Jon's website. Google Excel
Charts and look for Jon Peltier's sites.
--
Thanks,
Shane Devenshire


"mechengstudent" wrote:

I want a best fit line to go pass through the obviously linear portion of the
data and ignore all other points, how do i do this?

Here's a link to an interactive Excel regression tool that let's you select
which continuous set of data points you want to do regression on.

http://processtrends.com/toc_trend_a...e_Regr ession

Let me know if you need any further help

Kelly

http://processtrends.com



"mechengstudent" wrote in message
...
I want a best fit line to go pass through the obviously linear portion of
the
data and ignore all other points, how do i do this?