Trend lines are basically used for predict the the certain trend of a variable in the continuation. Trend lines also helps to find the correlation between two variables simultaneously. For predicting the trend in Tableau you need to have one date time dimension against one measure. for example if you want to show the trend line for month wise sales from the default data set of tableau (Sample Superstore). So first you need to drag and drop Month(Order date) and Sales and make a line chart as shown below:
After that right click on the chart area and select the Trend line option, then you can see the trend line which is linear in nature.
Now if you want to change the trend line nature like initially it is for linear, and now you want for logarithmic or polynomial of some degree. So for that right click on that chart area and then select edit trend line option, new pop up window will appear. from this window you can choose the trend line nature. for this example i choose the polynomial of degree 4.
If you want to learn more about trend line and other predictive modelling and tableau then you can check learn tableau or get trained to use Tableau with full potential through Tableau Online Training.
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