Forecasting in MS Excel using 3 different methods

The goal of this project is to find the forecasted values of the views on a YouTube channel for the coming 3 months using previous data. I found forecasted values using 3 methods in excel

1. Forecast function in excel.

FORECAST(x, known_y's, known_x's)

We use forecast function which takes dates column and views column and use linear regression to forecast the y values (dependent variable) for the given x(independent variable).

2.Using line chart

In this method we can check R-squared values for different mathematical functions that describe our given data and select the best function which give R-squared value nearest to 1 which is the max value for R-squared while min value for R-squared is 0. Then in the forecast we select forward forecast and enter the value 90 which means 90 days.

3.using forecast in data tab.

In this method forecasted values are found using data tab and then forecast sheets. Here we have more options like we can add seasonality factor, we can adjust confidence interval, fill missing values , manage duplicate values . It gives three columns of output values , lower confidence bound, upper confidence bound and the forecast value which the average of the other two columns.