Polynomial trendline order in Excel 2007

  • Thread starter Thread starter Arnaud Miege
  • Start date Start date
A

Arnaud Miege

Any particular reason why the maximum order for a polynomial trendline in
Excel 2007 is 6? This seems rather limiting. Any way of using a higher order
polynomial?

Thanks in advance,

Arnaud
 
FWIW, most poly fits of order six that you see in Excel have been
woefully overfitted. Most poly fits should not have an order higher than
two.

- Jon
 
I concur with Jon (who is not know for lightly forgiving Microsoft for any
of its 'trespasses')
In the physical sciences, a fit with more than 4 terms is very rare
One has to ask: what is the meaning of these terms?
Mathematically, any N order pairs of data can be fitted to a N-1 order
polynomial (2 points -> straight line, 3 points -> a parabola, etc) but just
because we can make a fit it does not mean we necessarily know more about
the data.
best wishes
 
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