how to add line of best fit in google sheets

In this tutorial, you will learn how to find slope in Google Sheets.

How To Find Slope In Google Sheets

When graphing data in Google Sheets, you might want to know what the slope of the graph's trendline is.

Slopes are a geometric concept that measures the steepness of a line and is frequently used to interpret the overall trends of data.

For example, if you're graphing the size of something over time, the slope represents the growth rate, with larger slopes indicating faster growth.

Slope is calculated as the rise divided by the run, or the change in height divided by the interval that change occurs over.

But don't get out a calculator to manually calculate the slope of your data, Google Sheets can do it for you with just a few clicks. Read on to learn how.

Insert a Scatter Plot in Google Sheets

If you don't already have a scatter plot in your spreadsheet, you'll have to insert one in order to find the slope.

Here's how:

Step 1

Select the range you want to chart, including headers:

Step 2

Open the Insert menu, and select the Chart option:

Step 3

A new chart will be inserted and the Chart Editor sidebar will open. In the Chart Editor, select the Scatter Chart option under Chart type

Find the Slope of Scatter Plot Data

Now you have a scatter plot, you can find the slope of the data by following these steps:

Step 1

Open the Chart Editor by selecting the chart and clicking on the 3 dot menu icon in the corner.

From the menu, select Edit Chart. The Chart Editor will open:

Step 2

Switch to the Customize tab by clicking the word Customize at the top of the editor.

Step 3

Click on the Series section to expand it:

Step 4

At the very bottom of the Series section is the Trendline checkbox. Click on this to turn on the trendline for your graph.

This is the line we will find the slope for.

Step 5

When the Trendline box is checked, a few more options will appear below it, including a dropdown for the trendline Label.

Choose the Use Equation option from this dropdown:

Step 6

The equation for the trendline will be displayed above the graph

Step 7

The equation for a straight line is y = mx + c, where m is the slope and c is the y intercept of the line.

We can use this to get the slope of the line from the equation. In the example above, the equation is 9.44*X + -29.5.

So 9.44 is the slope in this example, and we can always find the slope by looking at the first number in the equation

Summary

Example Spreadsheet: Make a copy of the example spreadsheet

In this tutorial, I covered how to find slope in Google Sheets. Want more? Check out all the Google Sheets Tutorials.