What is the easiest way to do a quick and dirty regression analysis w/o having to buy software? Does Excel 2003 have this capability? Any other free programs would be helpful. Just want to get a quick correlation coefficient…
Install the analysis toolpak / add-in. Check the help file (F1)
See if you can tweak your Addins to include the Analysis Tookpak - VBA.
Exactly what the above two have said.
Exactly what the 2 prior to the one above said.
tools > data analysis > regression no addins required. this generates your regression summary (ANOVA tables, etc)
What everyone’s said so far.
I’m tending to agree with everyone, particularly myself. (Can that get me in trouble with FINRA?) Actually there’s some small difference in the VBA and non-VBA version – though I forget what.
Excel is your best bet, but you can also use R, which is a free download (do a google search on R-project). R does take some time to learn, but it is free and fairly powerful (also kinda neat - a lot like matlab).
you can also download a free trial of Minitab, but for a simple regression Excel is your best bet
Am I correct in assuming that SAS is the industry standard?
right on thx everyone… looks like excel will do the trick… trying to build an index of leading indicators for my company’s qtrly revenue
SAS is *an* industry standard, and a pretty common one at that. However, the SAS license is fairly expensive, and so others are still fairly present. Also used is S-plus (a commercial version of R), some shops might even use Stata. Matlab can be used for cross sectional regressions (I find it difficult to use for time series).
had SAS in college, but for basic R Excel is fine.
Does it do a good job for time series analysis?