from Hacker News

Inequality and Web Search Trends

by programmernews on 8/19/14, 3:07 PM with 20 comments

  • by eastbayjake on 8/19/14, 4:48 PM

    > The rise of inequality over the last four decades has created two very different Americas, and life is a lot harder in one of them.

    This would be a fascinating appendix for Charles Murray's book Coming Apart. If you liked this article, you might enjoy his quiz about which of these two Americas you are likely to live in: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/white-educated-and-wealt... (Edit: I scored 46 and the description is completely accurate: "A first-generation upper-middle-class person with middle-class parents")

  • by jawns on 8/19/14, 5:24 PM

    These results are pretty much exactly what you would expect -- people who are struggling aren't likely to be googling for luxury items -- and I would venture to guess that they would be fairly similar even if The Upshot used only income, or only education level, rather than a blend of six metrics, to determine "hard" and "easy" counties to live in.

    What I find especially intriguing are some of the explanations Leonhardt posits, which presume a causal link and attempt to suggest what that cause is. That's part of the reason why I enjoy running Correlated.org -- it's fun to try to guess what the connection might be between two seemingly unrelated things.

    But let's remember: Not all correlations entail a causal link. (I prefer that way of putting it over "Correlation does not imply causation," because correlation does imply causation ... it's just that it often wrongly implies it.)

  • by bcoates on 8/19/14, 4:37 PM

      There is evidence of the nation’s cultural divide in the results,
  with “Zoolander” (a 2001 movie starring Ben Stiller) and Vengaboys
  (a Dutch dance-pop band) popular in the easiest places and Kenneth
  Nixon, of the rock band Framing Hanley, popular in the hardest
  places."
    Vengaboys, huh?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zbi0XmGtMw

    Are the easiest places to live in the TV advertising markets of Six Flags, by any chance?

  • by josephschmoe on 8/19/14, 5:29 PM

    Wilcox, Alabama...8% disability?

    Is that entire county committing disability fraud? What's going on there?

  • by 001sky on 8/19/14, 3:45 PM

    nb-4l

    If this is the #3 search term, the data must be thin. Anyone familiar with this dataset want to chime in? I have a similar camera that is used pretty often and I couldnot even recognize the name without a google search. Did I just get lucky by buying 2x nb-6l ? maybe the nb-4l is really a pain point? Maybe some users of the elph series have real issues with this thing?

  • by oo7jeep on 8/19/14, 8:45 PM

    "Dog Benadryl"

  • by gojomo on 8/19/14, 4:30 PM

    What if the only thing poor, unhealthy, superstitious regions really need is more hobbyist cameras?