I don't know the intention of the author, but I see like a lot of "Look, it's happening! The economy is going down!" posts pop up these days. Which may be true, but it can also be a self-fulfilling profecy if everyone is doing that on all platforms. Which would be a shame. I'm not saying HN and other platforms should censor (/ take action) either. It's just a thought I have on this subject, and I don't know if there…
> I don't know the intention of the author Why does his intent matter unless you think the data is being skewed or misrepresented? Seems like a fairly objective factual post to me (but I didn’t run the numbers myself). I would appreciate if data observations like this always included the script so people could easily (and quickly) verify the results, but that’s just a personal knit pick.
Because the data can be cherry-picked, intentionally or un-intentionally, similar to https://xkcd.com/882/
If you believe a trend exists (or just want to find evidence for it for other reasons) and you keep looking for statistical evidence of it, you're going to find it.