Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 113 posts

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#31

Post by CydeWeys »

Smerity wrote: post #3

I'm glad this was written and has more historical examples than just Brexit. I could imagine a good portion of the questions could be originating from students. If a large political or economic event happens, it's not unlikely for classrooms teachers to task their students to understand what's happening. Search is the obvious first step for that. Even more broadly, and in line with the article, extrapolating from a s…

Forget students even, I'm an adult with a compulsive information-seeking habit, as I suspect a lot of other HN readers are. I know who Harriet Tubman is, but I don't know all there is to know about her, so on the date that her $20 bill debut was announced I Googled her and read parts of her Wikipedia article, the same way I am constantly doing for all sorts of current event topics.

How can wanting to learn more possibly be demonized? Would we rather have a situation where a big influential vote affecting the future of an entire nation comes up and no one does any research about it?

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#32

Post by bduerst »

th0ma5 wrote: post #17
deadalus wrote: post #8

The Washington Post reporters knew that Google Trends data was not accurate and misleading. They went with it because: it is a liberal site, wanted to make people angry against the Brexit voters. Also Jeff Bezos(the owner) has a beef with Trump and publicly supports liberal media outlets like Gawker. tldr: Nothing unexpected happened, they knew what they were doing.

Rather than downvote, I'd love to see some links regarding if the Post has a liberal bias, that they knew they were publishing inaccurate and misleading information and did so willingly with intent to deceive, and evidence that they want their readers to be angry against the Brexit votes. I totally agree with your other, factual statements, Bezos I'm sure doesn't care for Trump, and does indeed probably support Gawke…

Same here. It's seems to me they're trying to spread F.U.D., but I would love to read more if it's backed up.

On the flip side of the coin, some typically conservative media tried to use Google Trends to prove manipulation of instant search results to be pro-Hillary [1], with the same results of not really undestanding how instant search really works [2][3].

[1] http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/06/10/google-burying-anti...

[2] http://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-google...

[3] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-instant-behin...

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#33

Post by vlunkr »

Any statistical information can be used inappropriately, so it's only logical that it applies to google trends. We seem to be wired as a culture to take stats at face value, myself included. This is a nice cautionary tale.

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#34

Post by NetTechM »

Well written article! I always find it funny when the media claims a majority with their wording when in fact it is an extreme minority.

Like those afflicted with H1N1/Bird Flu/zika/ebola etc.. all are dwarfed by people that die every year from the common flu and yet the news portrays them as epidemics to drum up viewers for a week or two.

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#35

Post by lostlogin »

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…

Slightly off topic - the best feature of reading on an iOS device is the workflow of select word > define. Going to a browser and typing/pasting in a word then searching is a step too removed for me to do it routinely.

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#36

Post by wildmusings »

atarian wrote: post #15

I honestly took the WP article at face value and told a coworker that Brexit voters were regretting their decision based on conclusions drawn from Google trends. I feel like one of those ants that have been infected by the mind control fungus, helplessly infecting others with misinformation designed for an agenda.

And for the vast majority of people that heard this, it will never be challenged. They will walk on through life believing it is true and never hearing a single reason why it isn't. The WaPo won't run a front page article tomorrow saying "Why we were full of shit".

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#37

Post by lostlogin »

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.

It's better than the New Zealand Herald (pretty much the national news paper) which regularly resorts to printing Reddit comments in full. Often unattributed.

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#39

Post by Smerity »

CydeWeys wrote: post #31
Smerity wrote: post #3

I'm glad this was written and has more historical examples than just Brexit. I could imagine a good portion of the questions could be originating from students. If a large political or economic event happens, it's not unlikely for classrooms teachers to task their students to understand what's happening. Search is the obvious first step for that. Even more broadly, and in line with the article, extrapolating from a s…

Forget students even, I'm an adult with a compulsive information-seeking habit, as I suspect a lot of other HN readers are. I know who Harriet Tubman is, but I don't know all there is to know about her, so on the date that her $20 bill debut was announced I Googled her and read parts of her Wikipedia article, the same way I am constantly doing for all sorts of current event topics. How can wanting to learn more possi…

My specific comment re: students was in reference to the perpetuation of "people who were searching 'what is the EU' have already voted on Brexit". That falsely assumed that those searches were from people who had already voted on the topic, suggesting lack of proper background information for such an important decision.

Young students are a group who may likely search for this information after the vote when it had a major impact on their country as before the vote it wasn't necessarily important for them to have detailed knowledge about it.

I'd hope we would never penalize someone for trying to get background information, no matter how "simple", before making an important decision, regardless of whether they're a student or an adult.

To an even broader point, imposter syndrome is hard enough when you just feel like you're behind on your fundamentals, let alone when you are actually behind on your fundamentals. Improving yourself should never be stigmatized.

Re: Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends

#40

Post by [deleted] »

DanBC wrote: post #16
atarian wrote: post #15

I honestly took the WP article at face value and told a coworker that Brexit voters were regretting their decision based on conclusions drawn from Google trends. I feel like one of those ants that have been infected by the mind control fungus, helplessly infecting others with misinformation designed for an agenda.

To be fair, some voters are regretting their decision. Here's the former editor of The Sun (a large uk tabloid "red top") saying he regrets voting leave. http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/former-sun-editor-ke... There are many others, but I link this one because, well, he should have known better.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN