Linest, Growth & Trend

[doctorgori]

Hi all (new forum member)...
I am "pretty good" with Excell but....
Linest, growth & trend kick my rear....as usual the cryptic Excell "help" isn't clear enuff for folks at my IQ level...

Anyway, I'd like to know how to do a trend by entering a forumula JUST LIKE using edit>fill>series>growth on the menu
(pardon the lack of a HTML spreadsheet pic, I'm lazy and i'm sure you'll follow this anyway)....

I have Row 1 (A1:L1) filled with a series of 12 months or 12 years or whatever date range....

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Row 2 has a beggining amount of say 40K under Jan and a "Goal" amount of 800K under Dec, while that cells B2:K2 are blank.....

I'd like to use a formula that will fill or "trend" the cells B2:K2 such that a goal amount of 800 is reached...(I'd like to use both a "linear" OR a exponential formula)

Also: how can I find the x & y intercepts on a line if I only know the starting point and ending points (yes; it's a similar issue to the aformentioned question)

How do I do that automatically w/o always manually selecting the cells and using fill>series>trend>growth ?

Thanks a Bunch in advance: Ken

 

[MrKowz]

This is more of a mathematical solution than excel...

But consider your points to be (x1,y1) and (x2,y2).

The following will give you a linear formula that connects the two points:

Y = [(y2-y1)/(x2-x1)](x-x1)+y1

From there, if you want to find the X-Intercept, set Y = 0 and solve for x.

If you want to find the Y-Intercept, set X = 0 and solve for y.

 

[doctorgori]

This is more of a mathematical solution than excel...

But consider your points to be (x1,y1) and (x2,y2).

The following will give you a linear formula that connects the two points:

Y = [(y2-y1)/(x2-x1)](x-x1)+y1

From there, if you want to find the X-Intercept, set Y = 0 and solve for x.

If you want to find the Y-Intercept, set X = 0 and solve for y.

Thanks for the reply...yeah I remember most of that from HS: y=mx+b ...erh ah..uh sumthin like that...but I'm 100% sure Excel can do it, I'm also pretty sure its linest, growth or trend (I think)...and thats what I'm looking for...

 

[Oaktree]

If you don't like LINEST, there are SLOPE and INTERCEPT functions in Excel too, which would tell you the m and the b for your line...