Methodological sabotage of growth rates

Following the interest in a previous post about analysing growth curves in Matlab I would like to discuss issues in growth curves that can arise from the methodological/biological side of things. Fitting the data is perfect if the data is perfect, if not, looking at what is wrong by eye is warranted for future corrections.

Growth curves can be divided into phases (lag, exponential, stationary and death) and each has its pitfalls.