Brian "Krow" Aker's Idle Thoughts - Assumptions, Trend estimation. Trend estimation is a statistical technique to aid interpretation of data.
When a series of measurements of a process are treated as a time series, trend estimation can be used to make and justify statements about tendencies in the data, by relating the measurements to the times at which they occurred. By using trend estimation it is possible to construct a model which is independent of anything known about the nature of the process of an incompletely understood system (for example, physical, economic, or other system). This model can then be used to describe the behaviour of the observed data. Fitting a trend: least-squares[edit]