How can I regress a number series in Excel?

Posted by jcollum on Super User See other posts from Super User or by jcollum
Published on 2011-02-17T20:51:12Z Indexed on 2011/02/17 23:28 UTC
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I'd like to use these data to derive an equation using Excel.

300 13
310 12.6
320 12.2
330 11.8
340 11.4
350 11
360 10.8
370 10.6
380 10.4

As x goes up, y goes down. Seems straightforward. But when I do a polynomial regression on these data, even though the trendline matches the data pretty well, the equation it generates doesn't work. The equation is 0.0096x2 - 0.4181x + 13.341 When I plug in x values to that equation, the numbers go up! So something is pretty wrong here.

My steps:

  • place both number series in excel
  • select the second set (13, 12.6 ...)
  • plot a line graph
  • set the first set as the x axis labels
  • select Series1 and add a polynomial (2) trendline, display equation, display R-squared

That produces the equation above, with an R^2 value of .9955. But when I use that equation, it doesn't produce those outputs for those inputs.

Clearly I'm doing something wrong.

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