Add a trendline to a chart

You can see patterns in your data by adding trendlines to charts in Google Sheets. Trendlines are often helpful for financial or scientific data.

You can add trendlines to scatter plot, line, column, and bar charts.

Add a trendline to a Chart

To add a trendline:

1. Open Google Sheets.
2. Open a spreadsheet with a chart where you want to add a trendline.
3. Select the chart and in the top right corner, click the drop-down arrow.
4. Select Advanced edit.
5. Click the Customize tab and scroll to the “Trendline” section at the bottom.
6. The trendline is set to “None” by default. Click the menu next to “Trendline” to choose the type of trendline that best fits your data.
   1. Linear: For data that closely follows a straight line.
   2. Exponential: A curved line that’s best for data that rises and falls proportional to its current value.
7. After selecting a type of trendline, you can edit the following features of the trendline:
   1. Color
   2. Opacity
   3. Line thickness
   4. Label options
   5. R-squared visibility - This shows how closely the trendline fits the data. The closer to R^2 = 1 (or -1), the more perfect the fit.
8. Click Update.

Edit a trendline

To edit a trendline:

Click the trendline itself to edit the following options straight from the chart. Click the corresponding icon to edit each of the features:

• Trendline type  - linear, exponential, or none
• Color 
• Opacity 
• Line thickness 
• R-squared visibility  - This shows how closely the trendline fits the data. The closer to R^2 = 1 (or -1), the more perfect the fit.

You can also edit by clicking the drop-down arrow in the top-right corner of the chart > selecting Advanced edit > clicking the Customize tab and scrolling to the “Trendline” section.

https://support.google.com/docs/answer/6075154?hl=en 

12/2/14 pg