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Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

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Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#21

Post by ghayes »

CM30 wrote: post #19
Buge wrote: post #11

Googling something does not mean you don't know what it is. Very often I google things that I know quite a bit about. Sometimes to see if there is any news about it, or just to get to the wikipedia page, and brush up on a few facts.

Or in some cases, to 'confirm' that what you think about something is correct or popular. How many of the people searching for the EU stuff were those in both sides looking to validate their own decisions? But yeah, Googling stuff can mean a lot of things, and its ridiculous to assume it purely means someone doesn't know about something.

To back this up, I often try to Google in non-biased ways. If you search for "Is paleo unhealthy," you're going to get very different results than "health benefits of Paleo."

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#22

Post by TeMPOraL »

minimaxir wrote: post #10
huac wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy for Facebook to say, here's our actual engagement numbers because we have (nearly) perfect tracking! But from an outsider's perspective, say a journalist or a hedge fund bro, it's difficult to perform any truly rigorous analysis involving these unobservable behaviors. So people come up with proxies - Google Trends, polls, or if you're truly adventurous, credit card spend information. [1] Anyways, using prod…

Printing misleading charts and presenting as fact is often worse than printing nothing at all.

I wonder how many people do that just to lie to people, because if people believe that Google Trends pseudostatistic, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#24

Post by ixtli »

This is the sort of thing that I like to keep around to link to people when they extrapolate incorrectly from Trends. However the really poor copy editing honestly makes me reconsider this, as a reader. I think the quality of what you read reflects on you and quality is a measure composed of many variables.

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#25

Post by ecdavis »

Joeboy wrote: post #12

I'd say the core problem here is that people are insufficiently cynical about plurals. If you see a headline that says "Belgians are going crazy about a roller-blading echidna", you should be asking "How many Belgians?". If there's no answer in the article, the answer is "at least two, maybe". Google Trends is just one of many ways that headline might come to exist.

"Which Belgians?" is a similarly important question to ask.

I was somewhat surprised by the immediate inference that people searching "what is the EU?" were people who voted to leave, rather than people who voted to stay, or people who didn't vote at all.

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#26

Post by throwanem »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #20
Buge wrote: post #11

Googling something does not mean you don't know what it is. Very often I google things that I know quite a bit about. Sometimes to see if there is any news about it, or just to get to the wikipedia page, and brush up on a few facts.

Google is indeed rightfully called "the Address Bar of the Internet" in the article. Few of the searches I did today[0]: - russian letters - because I needed to copy-paste a glyph - ramen - because I wanted to double-check this word for one of my today's HN comments - polyvalent - because "wtf does that word in today's HN link mean?" - sabaton prague - to get the name of a song I wanted to listen to - list polecający…

Firefox has gotten a lot more usable in the last few versions, and Chrome-style tab isolation should be here a few versions from now. If they're still screwing up in any major way, it's in the ever-closer approximation of the terrible Chrome UI, but there's an extension [1] which solves that quite handily.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#27

Post by throwanem »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #22
minimaxir wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Printing misleading charts and presenting as fact is often worse than printing nothing at all.

I wonder how many people do that just to lie to people, because if people believe that Google Trends pseudostatistic, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy?

> I wonder how many people do that just to lie to people

Ooh, lots, I'm sure. It's a brilliant way to lie, because it makes catching you out look like a lot of hard work.

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#28

Post by TeMPOraL »

throwanem wrote: post #26
TeMPOraL wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is indeed rightfully called "the Address Bar of the Internet" in the article. Few of the searches I did today[0]: - russian letters - because I needed to copy-paste a glyph - ramen - because I wanted to double-check this word for one of my today's HN comments - polyvalent - because "wtf does that word in today's HN link mean?" - sabaton prague - to get the name of a song I wanted to listen to - list polecający…

Firefox has gotten a lot more usable in the last few versions, and Chrome-style tab isolation should be here a few versions from now. If they're still screwing up in any major way, it's in the ever-closer approximation of the terrible Chrome UI, but there's an extension [1] which solves that quite handily. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...

Thanks for the extension link. In my comment though, I didn't mean Chrome interface, I meant the UI of https://history.google.com/. It's now made Inbox-style, but with zero functionality.

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#29

Post by kbenson »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #20
Buge wrote: post #11

Googling something does not mean you don't know what it is. Very often I google things that I know quite a bit about. Sometimes to see if there is any news about it, or just to get to the wikipedia page, and brush up on a few facts.

Google is indeed rightfully called "the Address Bar of the Internet" in the article. Few of the searches I did today[0]: - russian letters - because I needed to copy-paste a glyph - ramen - because I wanted to double-check this word for one of my today's HN comments - polyvalent - because "wtf does that word in today's HN link mean?" - sabaton prague - to get the name of a song I wanted to listen to - list polecający…

I often google the things I'm discussing on HN as well, to make sure my facts are straight, and to define words that sounds right to use, but I want to be precise[1]. What I google probably has little relevance to what I "know" or not. Also, I try to google my own position in some arguments to see if I can find the talking points of the other side, and how well my views fare in their light.

1: There's a fine line between using language that some percentage of people won't necessarily know the correct definition of but is precise to your meaning, and using less precise terminology that requires more words and sentences to arrive at what may be equivalent. In my experience, people generally have a mostly correct idea of the meaning of most of the less common words in English, but through remembering prior uses in context, not through necessarily remembering the definition. I like to skirt this line (at least, where it is for me, as it's different for different people), and rely on readers that care to look up the definition of a word that they aren't sure if it implies something specific (as I try to).

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#30

Post by kbenson »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #28
throwanem wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has gotten a lot more usable in the last few versions, and Chrome-style tab isolation should be here a few versions from now. If they're still screwing up in any major way, it's in the ever-closer approximation of the terrible Chrome UI, but there's an extension [1] which solves that quite handily. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...

Thanks for the extension link. In my comment though, I didn't mean Chrome interface, I meant the UI of https://history.google.com/ . It's now made Inbox-style, but with zero functionality.

I just searched for that and used it for the first time to look to prior searches to use in another comment, and found the interface to be pretty bad. But in writing this comment, I found that it has a "go to date" option at the top and a search box that searches your history. It's actually far better than I thought on first use (but I'm not sure it qualifies as good).
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