Popularity of technology on Stack Overflow and Hacker News: Causality Analysis

Re:Popularity of technology on Stack Overflow and Hacker New... by stared on Sunday June 10, 2018 @01:23PM (#17279079)

Measuring causality is hard. Without randomized control trials, you pretty much need to assume some causal graph structure (plain data is not enough).

See: "ML beyond Curve Fitting: An Intro to Causal Inference and do-Calculus" http://www.inference.vc/untitled/

When it comes to this SO vs HN article based on data one can look at correlations. Even if some delayed correlations, then still - it does not imply causation (e.g. HN crowd my by faster to post links to new technologies than SO crowd to questions).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Popularity of technology on Stack Overflow and Hacker New... by nerdponx on Sunday June 10, 2018 @01:25PM (#17279096)

Sure, but you need to make your assumed graph convincing. As the GP said,

Here's a simple inferential threat; the author ascribes the popularity of technology on SO as causing the popularity of a technology on HN. What if, instead, some third common cause caused both, but it caused SO spikes faster than HN spikes.

You either need to account for this, or make a convincing argument that no such common cause exists.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Popularity of technology on Stack Overflow and Hacker New... by stared on Sunday June 10, 2018 @01:41PM (#17279182)

Sure, fully I agree with that.

[ Parent | on HN ]