Microsoft Office Excel has built-in tools that allow you to create different types of charts from tabular data. The graph on which you can display a straight line is also referred to here as diagrams. Excel also has the ability to fill a table with data calculated according to a user-defined formula, so the task of constructing a straight line using this program can be classified as not very difficult.
Necessary
Tabular editor Microsoft Office Excel 2007 or 2010
Instructions
Step 1
Start Excel and fill in two columns on the default sheet it created with an empty table. The first column should contain a list of points along the abscissa axis that should be present on a graph with a straight line. Place in the top cell (A1) of this column the minimum value along the X-axis - for example, -15.
Step 2
In the second row of the column, enter an equal sign, then click the mouse on the previous cell, enter a plus sign and type the number corresponding to the increment for each subsequent point along the abscissa axis. For example, to have a distance of 2.5 points between points on the X axis, the contents of this cell (A2) should be: = A1 + 2, 5. To finish entering the formula, use the Enter key.
Step 3
Move the mouse pointer over the lower right corner of the filled table cell, and when the pointer transforms into a black plus sign, stretch the cell down to the last row of the data column. For example, if you want a line to be drawn using 15 points, drag the selection to cell A15.
Step 4
In the first line of the second column (B1), enter the algorithm for calculating the points of the straight line. Say, if they need to be calculated using the formula y = 3x-4, the contents of this cell should look like this: = 3 * A1-4. After pressing the Enter key, stretch this cell to the full height of the table in the manner described in the previous step.
Step 5
Select both filled columns and go to the "Insert" tab in the Excel menu. In the "Charts" group of commands, open the "Scatter" drop-down list and select the most suitable type of graph. Immediately after that, the spreadsheet editor will calculate the points and place the graph in the same sheet of the document.
Step 6
Using a block of three tabs, united by the heading "Working with Charts", give the desired appearance to the created chart. The application adds these tabs to the menu immediately after creating a new diagram, and later you can call them by selecting the graph with a mouse click.
