Chapter 41. Estimating Straight Line Relationships

  • I manage a plant that produces small refrigerators. National headquarters tells me how many refrigerators to produce each month. For budgeting purposes, I want to forecast my monthly operating costs. How can I determine the relationship between monthly production and monthly operating costs?

  • How well does my relationship explain the monthly variation in plant operating cost?

  • How accurate are my predictions likely to be?

  • When estimating a straight line relationship, which Excel functions can I use to give me the slope and intercept of the line that best fits the data?

Every business analyst should have the ability to estimate the relationship between important business variables. The Excel trend ...

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