How to find the gradient and intercept if you know values of x and y?

I have 2 columns of data, one being the x values and one being the y values. Now I've been tasked with finding the intercept and gradient using these values but I have absolutely no idea how to get started on this. Would anyone mind helping me out?

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

help polyfit

Answer 2

[Star Strider]

Another option:

x = rand(10,1);
y = rand(10,1);

B = [ones(size(x)) x]\y;

intercept = B(1);
slope = B(2);

I used ‘slope’ rather than ‘gradient’ because gradient is also the name of a built-in MATLAB function.