Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Can you normalize it against total text volume? Number of mentions always goes up with time as HN grows, % of posts mentioning will be a better measure of mindshare.

Re: Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

#5

Post by edge17 » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 8:19 PM UTC

first of all, very cool.

how is it normalized? every single thing I type in has an upward trend, which to me just suggests that interest in Hacker News has increased over the last few years... and I don't really need a chart to tell me that since I live in silicon valley :)

Re: Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

#6

Post by sant0sk1 » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 8:20 PM UTC

ntoshev wrote: post #4

Awesome work! Can you normalize it against total text volume? Number of mentions always goes up with time as HN grows, % of posts mentioning will be a better measure of mindshare.

Thanks so much! Hmm, good idea on % of posts, though most of the value I believe is in comparing multiple terms, in which case the raw number of mentions isn't as important as the relation of the trend lines.

Re: Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

#7

Post by arturadib » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 8:21 PM UTC

Is it possible to somehow normalize the numbers by the total number of posts/comments, so that trends across the years do not mostly reflect the user base/activity growth at HN?

Awesome work thus far though.

Re: Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

#8

Post by patrickaljord » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 8:23 PM UTC

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=android%2C+iphone

Re: Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

#9

Post by sant0sk1 » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 8:23 PM UTC

edge17 wrote: post #5

first of all, very cool. how is it normalized? every single thing I type in has an upward trend, which to me just suggests that interest in Hacker News has increased over the last few years... and I don't really need a chart to tell me that since I live in silicon valley :)

Good point. I wasn't really thinking about normalization as I was more interested in comparing trends on multiple terms, but I don't think it'd be too much work to change the algorithm to account for HN's growth.

Re: Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News

#10

Post by sant0sk1 » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 8:25 PM UTC

arturadib wrote: post #7

Is it possible to somehow normalize the numbers by the total number of posts/comments, so that trends across the years do not mostly reflect the user base/activity growth at HN? Awesome work thus far though.

Yup, this seems like an obvious improvement as I believe you're the 3rd to mention it already :)

I'll definitely do that next, since it's not too hard to implement and seems like a big win when you are just trending a single term.