R help - Aug 2010 - Detecting Growth Trends

Dear All,
I am given some noisy data which (by naked eye) appears to be 
oscillating first but finally growing.
Is there any statistical set (I mean something different from e.g. a 
linear fit, which would not be convincing at all in my case) to detect 
growth (possibly without relying on any data fitting)?
Many thanks

Lorenzo

You can try a unit root test which test for stationarity in a series.
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> Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:37:16 -0700 (PDT)
> From: rtist <patwarner2424 at yahoo.com>
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Detecting Growth Trends
> Message-ID: <1283290636694-2402347.post at n4.nabble.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>
> If the test rejects the null, then it has determined that the new set of
> incoming data is no longer purely oscillatory in the mean reverting sense
> (it is now unit root and exhibits growth).  Unless I misinterpreted, the OP
> wants to find a statistical method to determine such behavior beyond purely
> eyeballing the data stream.
> Since I assume the OP is also referring to a dynamic data stream, one could
> simply run the test with a sliding window and use the p result to determine
> if the regime is changing from mean reverting to growth.
>
> I'm not sure how an alternate form of regression fitting says anything
about
> the question as I interpreted it (although, hopefully the poster can
> respond).
> --
Hi,
No intention of starting a flamewar and thanks for the many suggestions.
Indeed in my case I am not looking for a fit, but, as you nicely put it, 
for something a bit more on the quantitative side than eyeballing.
Many thanks

Lorenzo