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

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 8:50 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.

Post by cheez » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 8:53 PM UTC

Post by hammock » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 9:01 PM UTC

sant0sk1 wrote: post #9

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.

Post by andres » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 9:03 PM UTC

sant0sk1 wrote: post #16

pvilchez wrote: post #12

I searched for my own username expecting a flatline, but there were a few hits in the last few years. Flattering, but I'm fairly certain that hackers have not been talking about me. ;) Perhaps you should only query titles and text, not usernames? edit: for example, searching for pg would include his own submissions as well as mentions and Ask PG subs.

Strange, I didn't expect the search API to return results for a name that's in the by-line of a comment, but it sure does: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=pvilch... This is something I should definitely work around in the future. Thanks for bring it to my attention!

Post by sant0sk1 » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 9:11 PM UTC

retube wrote: post #15

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 :)

Came to say exactly this. The chart seems to start (by default anyway) at the beginning of 2007. I'm guessing the user-base and thus activity of HN has increased considerably since then. So yes it would be good to be able to re-normalise in some way. By the number of registered users would probably be the simplest. By number of comments posted would be another, by number of submissions or even number of words would a…