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Comment by 1337biz | Hacker News Reader

Great article! But when I saw the New Yorker Url my first reation was - let's see how they are going to make this into something negative about Trump this time. They still live up to my expectations.

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It was one joke said in passing. And it was directly relevant to the content of the sentence it was in.

I don't think your implied critique holds much water here. This isn't an academic paper anyway... it's an expository article written in the amusing/playful tone for which the publication is known.

Not sure if this was intended as a joke, or another one of those pedantic remarks. If they are serious about that argument they should start telling their advertisers not the total number of Unique Visitors, but the Unique Visitors in relation to the total number of Internet Users. I'd love to see how successful they became over the last 10 years...

That's silly, because every platform then has the same denominator of 'total internet users,' and you're dividing by the same number.

It's not silly because the number changes over time. It could make the difference between an upward trend and a downward trend. (Whether that difference matters is up to you, but it is a difference.)

But everybody faces the same trend in 'total worldwide internet users.' So if an advertiser has its choice of platforms to advertise on, it can compare the same metric, regardless of whether or not you do the division.

Did you really think it was great? The subject matter is critically important, but the article sadly lacking in substance. These are three of the bullet points, "Recognize that bullshitters are different from liars," "Watch out for unfair comparisons," "Remember that correlation doesn’t imply causation" - ok, so are they now passing off middle school science as college learning? This doesn't add much ammo to fight misuse of big data.

agree, the article offers almost no substance.

Oh course, it's en vogue

You mean "relevant" I think.

No I meant, "en vogue". Meaning "fashionable".

"fashionable" is not what call something that's necessary.

That's "in vogue", isn't it?

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