Trend Lines

[Nev.]

If I have data entered in a spread sheet,
can I have the spread sheet sheet draw trend lines,
but nothing else?

TIA,

Nev.

 

[Tushar Mehta]

Well, a trendline would have to be in a chart, so the literal answer
would be no.

However, you could do the following: Create a chart with the data, add
a trendline, and make the charted data invisible (double-click the
charted series, then, from the Pattern tab, set all options to 'None').

--
Regards,

Tushar Mehta, MS MVP -- Excel
www.tushar-mehta.com
Excel, PowerPoint, and VBA add-ins, tutorials
Custom MS Office productivity solutions

 

[Nev.]

Thanks for your suggestion, but I still seem to be doing
something wrong, or is it just impossible?

I can successfully make the line chart invisible
(white line on white background)
but then all the points on the now invisible line chart
appear as black squares.

Visually it's much more confusing than line charts & trend lines.

I may have to use pencil & paper

Nev.


"Tushar Mehta" wrote ...

 

[Jerry W. Lewis]

If you are formatting the data series, as Tushar and I (in reply to your
second identical post) suggested, then there are two columns of options:
the left column for the Line and the right column for the Marker. The
Marker is where you hide the data points.

Why are you connecting the points with lines anyway, when what you want
is a trendline, not a connecting line?

Jerry

 

[Nick Holway]

If I have data entered in a spread sheet,
can I have the spread sheet sheet draw trend lines,
but nothing else?

Could you use Excel's linest function and then plot a chart from the data
from the function?

Nick

 

[David J. Braden]

Yes.
But in many not-unreasonable cases, that approach stinks.

Jerry W. Lewis, in particular, has shown how much better Trendline is
than not only LINEST (fixed in Excel 11), but in many other dedicated
stat packages. As far as my own tests go, LINEST never dominates
TrendLine when all you care for is the coefficients, even for v. 11 (XL
2003).

XL11 (v2003) has significantly improved LINEST; it might be up to the
very, very high standards that TrendLine sets.

Bottom line? Cannot go wrong with Trendline, and from what I can tell,
you may do as well with LINEST() *only* in version 11 of Excel, but
certainly in no earlier version.

You can find code to extract coefficients from Trendline by Googling for
such under my name; you can find other workarounds by Googling under
Jerry's name.
Regards,
Dave Braden
MVP - Excel

 

[Nick Holway]

Yes.
But in many not-unreasonable cases, that approach stinks.

Jerry W. Lewis, in particular, has shown how much better Trendline is
than not only LINEST (fixed in Excel 11), but in many other dedicated
stat packages. As far as my own tests go, LINEST never dominates
TrendLine when all you care for is the coefficients, even for v. 11 (XL
2003).

XL11 (v2003) has significantly improved LINEST; it might be up to the
very, very high standards that TrendLine sets.

Bottom line? Cannot go wrong with Trendline, and from what I can tell,
you may do as well with LINEST() *only* in version 11 of Excel, but
certainly in no earlier version.

You can find code to extract coefficients from Trendline by Googling for
such under my name; you can find other workarounds by Googling under
Jerry's name.
Regards,
Dave Braden
MVP - Excel

Have found this
http://groups.google.com/[email protected] work around. Thanks for pointing this out to me.

Nick

 

[Nev.]

I did manage to achieve a a few, very few, succesful trendlines at
the start, but not since. So I will be trying to work out what I may
have done right, accidentally, then. Perhaps I may be able to
report back with some more success next week.

I may ask a couple more questions then.

Thanks,

Nev.

P.S. I wasn't trying to connect the points, it was just that
the points seemed to be left when I made the line invisible.



"Jerry W. Lewis" wrote ...