title: Python: Finding a trend in a set of numbers
body: <p>I have a list of numbers in Python, like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>x = [12, 34, 29, 38, 34, 51, 29, 34, 47, 34, 55, 94, 68, 81]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What's the best way to find the trend in these numbers? I'm not interested in predicting what the next number will be, I just want to output the trend for many sets of numbers so that I can compare the trends.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit:</strong> By trend, I mean that I'd like a numerical representation of whether the numbers are increasing or decreasing and at what rate. I'm not massively mathematical, so there's probably a proper name for this!</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit 2:</strong> It looks like what I really want is the co-efficient of the linear best fit. What's the best way to get this in Python?</p>