I am using the trend function to trend utilization rate. My known x's are
the utilization rate, and my know y's are the years. I have data on an
annual basis for 2000-2015, and then it jumps to 5-yr increments for 2015 to
2030. Can I just trend this out despite the increment change, or do I need
to make an adjustment. I was trying to manually calculate y=mx +b, but
couldn't quite figure out how to manually calculate this given that I have a
year, and not an actual number for my y value. So, for example, if
utilization for 2000 is 200, would you use the following to calculate the
utilization for 2001: 2001=((2001-2000)/(x-200))200 + 2001

Thanks!