by Jim Plante on Mon Nov 26, 2007 1:32 pm
Sorry, Edd,
The X-axis is indicating each quarter. The legend needs to be one more line deep, so that it indicates 79 Q1, and so forth, stacked vertically. The data points are much closer together, so all of them are shown, but only half of them are indexed on the X-axis.
To make the chart, I copied the data you posted and pasted it into a text file. Used a regular expression to find and replace all the spaces with tabs, and saved it back to another text file. Finally, I imported that second text file into the spreadsheet as a CSV file.
I then made another column at C, labeled it Y&Q, and combined the last two digits of the year with the quarter, using the formula =RIGHT(A1, 2) & " Q" & B1. That gave me the year-and-quarter in one column. Select Column C and D (the Index), insert Chart, Select the XY plot with the lines option, set the axis titles, and let'er rip.
The rate of appreciation is the slope of the line. So to get that, I'd eliminate everything below 91 (copy from 91 forward onto another sheet in the workbook) and re-plot the graph. This time, insert a linear regression line.
But you need to know the slope and the intercept of that regression line. There's a single function that'll get'em both at once, but it's more complicated than you need to deal with right now. So use the SLOPE() and INTERCEPT() functions to get those values. You want to run those functions on the Y&Q and Index columns.
Jim Plante