We can easily insert any kind of graphs and charts in a Google Spreadsheet that may feel like a very promising and needful function but one of the another best feature of Google Sheets is that it also lets you find the slope of a graph to make you find your analyzing support data quickly in order to make you meeting ready.
But first let us know deeply what is slope
The slope is a measure of the steepness of a line. The slope will describe the direction of the line (positive or negative) as well as how steep it is. The slope will tell you how the line rises or falls across a given distance in the graph.
Here is an example of a positive and negative trendline slope plotted and a Y-axis and X-axis graph.
The slope = rise/run
Slopes are always indicated by an number. Larger numbers indicate steeper slopes. Like a slope of +55 will mean that for every unit we go on the x-axis, the y-axis increases by 55.
One of the great thing is don’t even need a graph to calculate the slope, just two columns representing all the variables of x-axis and y-axis are enough to have.
When we look at the slope in a spreadsheet, we’re usually talking about linear regression, which is a method of modelling and analyzing a relationship between two or more variables.
Steps to find Slope in Google Sheets
- How to add trendline to your chart
- First, select the data of which you want to calculate the slope.
- From the menu bar, first select insert and then select chart.
- Google Sheet will automatically select the chart that best fits your data. But for this example, I’ll pick up a scatter chart. The chart editor would be there on your screen’s right hand side. Click on drop down arrow of chart type section of settings tab. And now select the scatter chart.
- From the customize tab of chart editor, select series.
- Check the Trendline.
- You will now have a completed chart in your spreadsheet that shows the blue trendline (slope). It will look something like this
In Google Sheets, you can visualize the trendline of your graph which can help you better comprehend your data. This may be set up in minutes with a little expertise by following the preceding steps.
However, sometimes visualizing the slope isn’t enough; you also need to know what the slope’s value is. We’ll go through this now.
2. How to Figure out Slope of a Graph
- In a chart editor, select customize tab and then select series.
- Click the drop down arrow of Label
- And further select Use equation.
- The equation used to calculate the trendline will now appear at the top of your chart. Everything to the left of the *x is the slope, so in this dataset, my slope is 1155.
Calculating Slope Without a Graph
As mentioned earlier, if you don’t want to insert chart rather just want to calculate slope with just putting variable in spreadsheet, you can do so. There is a specific function for this and the syntax for the same is –
=SLOPE(data_y, data_x)
- data_y – this is the range that represents the dependent data
- data_x – this is the range that represents the independent data
Here is how this function would be used with our previous data:
The above image shows the exact formula used to calculate slope by the given data.
As you can see, there are variety of methods to calculate the slope of a trendline in Google Sheets. You can utilize the SLOPE feature or have sheets add slope to your chart automatically.