January 2006
Intermediate to advanced
442 pages
12h 3m
English
Content preview from Excel Scientific and Engineering CookbookBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 8. Curve Fitting and Regression
Introduction
A very common exercise when analyzing data is fitting a curve through that data. Curve fitting is the process of trying to find the curve (which is represented by some model equation) that best represents the sample data, or more specifically the relationship between the independent and dependent variables in the dataset. When the results of the curve fit are to be used for making new predictions of the dependent variable, this process is known as regression. Sometimes, you may want to fit a curve just to interpolate a set of data. At other times, you may actually want to extrapolate beyond the sample data. In still other cases, curve fitting can be used to predict parameters of some known model (an equation) given a set of observed data. In this chapter, I discuss several different techniques for performing linear and nonlinear curve fitting in Excel.
8.1. Performing Linear Curve Fitting Using Excel Charts
Problem
You’d like to generate a best-fit straight line for a set of data.
Solution
Use Excel’s chart trendline feature to perform a linear curve fit of your data. Plot your data using an XY scatter chart (see Chapter 4). Once your chart has been created, right-click on the data series and select Add Trendline from the pop-up menu.
Discussion
Linear curve fits are easily generated using the trendline feature built into Excel’s XY scatter chart. Once you’ve plotted your data using an XY scatter chart, you can generate a trendline ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.