Deriving mathematical equations

[damo]

Does anyone know if Microsoft Excel is capable of deriving
mathematical equation(s) from a dataset? I want to create
mathematical equation(s) from a dataset so that I can calculate th
mortality rate from the pesticide concentration (see attached file)

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|Filename: Pesticide.zip
|Download: http://www.excelforum.com/attachment.php?postid=4679
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[David J. Braden]

Damo,
*No* software worth using, if it even exists, is capable of creating
equations from datasets. *You* need to bring some hunches, info, and gut
feeling to what you see, and go from there. I'm not about to download
and open up your file (few of us in these groups would do so) to help
you on this one.

From what you wrote, I suppose a simple linear (in the coefficients!)
regression would do the trick. Make a histogram of the data (better yet,
a linear polygon) to get a feel for how mortality maps against pesticide
concentration. I seriously doubt it's of the form y = ax + b; perhaps
it's exponential? If, for whatever reason, you try a polynomial
regression, I suggest you don't go above a third order polynomial.

Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to simply use a search engine
to check out what you want to know; I just tried "mortality and
pesticides" and got a *lot* of interesting stuff. Perhaps you want to
narrow the search to a particular pesticide, in a particular
environment. For that matter, mortality of what? Humans? Pests? Other
creatures for whom the pesticide was not intended?

HTH
Dave Braden