How to find annual growth rate for 11 years (10 periods)?

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I'm supposed to find the average annual growth rate of a series of data for 11 years (10 periods).

I found there're two ways of doing it:

1. find the growth rate between every two years, add up the 10 growth rates and divide it by 10.

2. find the compound growth rate by (last year number-first year number)^(1/10)


I found the first method really time-consuming. But don't know I will get the exact answer by using the second method.

Which one is used more often in financial analysis?

Thanks ahead for your time:)

How to find annual growth rate for 11 years (10 periods)?