I don understand the “nearest smooth line” concept. How is this different from connecting the dots on a line graph?
You are attempting to find the trend of what happens to breathing rate as temperature increases. Thus, the line that you draw is often called a TREND line. If you’ve had a bit of math in college, you may have called the line a regression line. If you draw the nearest line to all the points, some points will be below the line and some will be above the line. You can then extend this line past the point where you would like to make a prediction (in this case, 25 degrees). Then you can read the breathing rate at 25 degrees from the graph. Excel allows you to make a trend line and has a good discussion of trend lines. From the Excel toolbar, click on “Help”. Then type in “How do I make a trend line”. Select “Project future values and perform regression analysis” from the list of choices. There is good information on how to use a graph to make a projection plus help topics on doing this using Excel. You may not want to use Excel to do this if you don’t feel comfortable with that program, bu
