making a chart that goes from zero to 400,000 over 2 years

StickyIcky

Hi ya'll

Firstly sorry the title should read zero to 500,000 over 2 years (not 400,000).

I'm trying to make a business plan and am stumbling around some of the basic mathematics that would be required to do so.

I was wondering if one if you would know the answer and be a helper to me

I'm trying to plot growth of a user base of a website on a graph.

I know in the first year they gained 100,000 users and in the second year they gained 400,000 users.

so the graph needs to show 24 months and at the end of the first 12 months a figure of 100,000 and at the end of the 24 months a total figure of 500,000.

I need the graph to look like a gradual curve.

Any pointers how I'd go about achieving this? I'm using MS Excel.

bnt

I don't have Excel proper here at home, so I can't tell you exactly what to click, but I'd do something like this:

Time | Users
0 | 0
12 | 100000
24 | 500000
Then create a line chart from that data as normal with no points. The line will be jagged, but you can then change it to a smoothed line. Microsoft says:
- Click the line data series you want to smooth.
- On the Format menu, click Selected Data Series, and then click the Patterns tab.
- Select the Smoothed line check box.

cruizer101

As above but choose a scatter type graph, then fit a trendline to it, if you right click on one of the data points should give option for trendline