Trend line or line of best fit in pgfplots

Question

Is there an "out of the box" way to automatically draw the trend line in pgfplots?

Below follows a basic illustration of a scatter graph with a line of best fit:

a graph with a line of best fit

For a linear regression see Section 4.22 of the pgfplots manual.
Of course, how could I have missed that? Didn't find anything in the scatter plot section.
Not out of the box, but pgfplots can call gnuplot and you can create a simple script to fit an arbitrary function to your points. This might be more flexible depending on your dataset
I've always gone with doing the fit myself, then plotting the line using two endpoints (so I can, for example, fix the intercept). Not very elegant, but it works ...
Some time back I made a little example on how to fit with pgfplots+gnuplot dl.dropbox.com/u/15487093/gnuplot-fit.tex

0sh · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-16 20:28:57Z

up vote 7 down vote accepted

Can be achieved using /pgfplots/table/create col/linear regression={⟨key-value-config⟩} documented in Section 4.22 of the pgfplots manual.

answered Feb 16 '11 at 20:28

0sh
487211

This link no longer works. type 'texdoc pdfplots' into your terminal for manual instead. – Magpie Jan 19 at 16:20

1 Answer