



If you select a single cell and enter =LINEST(C2:C35), it will return a single number, which is of no help. Instead of returning one number, it actually returns two (or more) numbers as the result. This is just my wild guess Excel can calculate the number exactly. In this case, the value for b would be 10,000, and the value for m would be 400. If you were to look at the data, you might guess that the prediction for a given month is $10,000 + Month number x $400. In this example, y is the revenue for the month, m is the slope of the line, x is the month number, and b is the y-intercept. You might remember from math class that a trendline is represented by this formula: y = mx + b Excel offers a function called LINEST that will calculate the formula for the trendline. Strategy: You can use the least-squares method to fit the sales data to a trendline. Problem: I have monthly historical sales data.
