SLOPE in Excel (Formula, Example) | How to Calculate Slope in Excel?

SLOPE Function in Excel (Table of Contents)

SLOPE Function in Excel
SLOPE Formula in Excel
How to Use SLOPE Function in Excel?

SLOPE Function in Excel

SLOPE function in Excel is categorized as statistical functions in Excel. In mathematical term ,the SLOPE returns the slope of a line between given data points in known y’s values and known x’s values. The slope of a linear regression line is the vertical distance/the horizontal distance between any of the two points on this line.

The Slope function returns the slope of a regression line based on the data points recognized by known_y_values and known_x_values

SLOPE Formula in Excel

SLOPE has two compulsory parameters i.e. known_y’s and known_xs.

Compulsory Parameter:

known_y’s: it is an array of known y-values.
known_x’s: it is an array of known x-values

Here the length of the known_x’s data array should be the same length as known_y’s data array, and value of the variance of the known x’s values must not be 0.

Remarks:

The SLOPE equation to find out the slope of the linear regression-line is as follows:

where and are the sample means and calculated by average(x values) and average(y values).

How to Use SLOPE Function in Excel?

It is very simple and easy to use. Let understand the working of SLOPE function by some examples. It can be used as a worksheet function and as a VBA function.

You can download this SLOPE Function Excel Template here – SLOPE Function Excel Template

Example #1

In the first example, we have two data sets with the known y’s values and known x’s value.

Now calculate the slope from this data =SLOPE(A3:A22,B3:B22) and output will be 2.7 as shown in the below table.

Output will be:

Example #2

In the second example, we have month wise data of known y’s value and known x’s value.

So here we can apply the SLOPE formula in excel as we used in the first example =SLOPE(E3:E22,F3:F22)

And the output will be 0.11 as shown in the below table.

SLOPE in Excel VBA

Suppose we have the X’s values located in the excel sheet range from A1 to A10, and Y’s values located in the given excel sheet from range B1 to B10, then we can calculate the SLOPE here by using the below VBA functions

Sub SLOPEcal() // start the slope function scope

Dim x, y as Range //declare the range x and y

set x = Range(“A10:A10”) //set known x’s values to range x.
set y = Range(“B10:B10”)//set known y’s values to range y.
slope = Application.WorksheetFunction.Slope(y, x) set

MsgBox slope // print the slope value in message box.

End sub // End the slope function

Things to Remember

SLOPE function through the #N/A! Error when the given array of known_x’s and array of known_y’s are of different lengths.

SLOPE Formula =SLOPE(A3:A12,B3:B15)

SLOPE function through the #DIV/0! error when:
- The variance of the given known_x’s evaluates to zero; or
- Any of the given arrays (known_x’s or known_y’s) are empty.

In SLOPE function, if an array or reference argument contains text, logical values, or empty cells, the values are ignored; however, cells with the value zero are included.

In the SLOPE function, the parameters must be numbers or names, arrays, or references that contain numbers.