Forum Discussion
Need help with trend analysis
Hi All, Need your support with the attached image of the data. I have a shortage report of an inventory, where I am looking at past 3 months data for some products and want to find out the trend. I...
Here is an example:
The formula in E2 is =SLOPE(A2:C2,{1,2,3})
It returns the slope of the linear trend line through the percentages in A2:C2.
A positive slope means an increase, a negative slope a decrease, and a slope near 0 means not much change.
The formula in D2 is =CORREL(A2:C2,{1,2,3})^2
It returns a measure of how well the data fit a linear regression. An R^2 of 85% or higher means that the slope provides a good fit, and an R^2 of 70% or less means that the slope doesn't really provide much information.
So in the screenshot, rows 2 and 5 show a clear increase or decrease, while rows 3 and 4 don't show a clear linear pattern.