[Gretl-users] two simple time series questions

Two simple time series questions: 1- I want a measure of a time series that describes how closely it resembles a given collection of time series. Thus, the time series collection may be contained in column 2 to n of an Excel file, with each column containing one of the collection, with the time series to be measured in column 1. 2- Define a measure of a time series that measures how close it is to a smoothly rising (but not necessarily monotonically rising) series. Thus using such a measure, one could rank a collection of time series so that those most smoothly rising and fastest rising rank highest/lowest using the measure. Thus the time series to be measured may reside in column 1 of an Excel spread sheet, with the second column being the numbers 1, 2, 3, . . . etc. The proximity of the given series to the collection or to "smooth rising" should be measured in some rms sense. I realize that these requirements are not completely defined. I'm looking for ideas.