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Okay, so I have a question. A lot of folks are saying this is anecdotal. Which is true. A hand full of hearsay. Probably just a bunch of jackasses talking crap.

Okay, so I have a question. A lot of folks are saying this is anecdotal. Which is true. A hand full of hearsay. Probably just a bunch of jackasses talking crap. But, how many stories like this are needed until it's no longer anecdotal? I keep seeing people on HN say "Anecdotal! Doesn't matter!". I mean, so is the story of someone getting hit by a car and breaking bones. If they say "high speed vehicles hitting someone can break bones", it's easy to say "Anecdotal! Many people are around high speed vehicles and don't break bones!" Which is true too. So... just saying. I've been doing data science on and off the last 2 years and the number 1 task is cleaning data. Which, in itself leads to problems. All data is anecdotal, except its collected in one place. Maybe the whole unbiased collection plays in, but no one is truly ever unbiased towards anything.

Spooky23 7y ago
The hint that it’s bullshit is when other obvious levers “cannot” get pulled. “My labor costs went up 8%, but I cannot raise the price of a sandwich!” If that we’re true, restaurants wouldn’t be able to charge $3 for a 12oz fountain coke in a glass cup that costs $0.10. Guess what... you can. If you can’t, usually there’s another, self-inflicted reason. If you look back a few years ago, there was a significant tomato price increase and you had similar stories where expensive tomatoes were prompting price increases on the menu.
- corodra 7y ago
  See, you fell into the problem I'm talking about. I'm not saying the people in the article are correct. I already thought they were short sighted and just bitching about problems they put their heads in the sand about. I'm arguing that this being anecdotal isn't enough to invalidate their claims. Their claims are invalid because of other factors that anyone with their own business can see through. But not for being anecdotal. I have an issue with the HN community using anecdotal as enough justifiable cause to say someone is wrong. Data is just a lot of recorded anecdotes in one place.
  - knightofmars 7y ago
    "Data is just a lot of recorded anecdotes in one place." I don't agree with this interpretation. Data is the use of quantitative measures to provide sound evidence for a compelling argument. Anecdotes rely on a "shoot from the hip" approach to describing a position. For example, blaming rising minimum wage as the sole factor in the success or failure of a business ignores a whole spectrum of factors (business rent, business insurance, prevailing local population wages, pricing, quality of food, quality of service, etc). Even if we took all of the anecdotes of these business owners into account and they all said "We had to eliminate staff and hours because of rising minimum wage." it isn't enough to actually support the claim that rising minimum wage causes the problems described. It informs a theory of the effects of rising minimum wage but without all of the supporting evidence and data collection that eliminates possible other influencing factors it is purely anecdotal and should in no way be considered supportive of their claims and therefore does in fact invalidate them. As an example, suppose that along with the city increasing minimum wage they also increased property taxes gradually over time. The property owners decided to then pass the increase in property taxes onto their renters. Because of the increase in both minimum wage and property taxes occurring at the same time it squeezed the owner's profit margins. The owner unable to do anything about the change in rent focuses entirely on the fact that they had to increase what they pay their employees due to the increase in minimum wage. When interviewed about the situation they only talk about the increase in minimum wage as the problem, which is anecdotal and ignores the other influencing factor, increase in rent due to the increase in property taxes.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    I discount anecdotal stuff based on the source and known agenda. When the WSJ laments about minimum wage, those anecdotes will be high noise. When the WSJ has an article about bond trading, anecdotes are usually going to be higher signal.

Spooky23 7y ago

The hint that it’s bullshit is when other obvious levers “cannot” get pulled. “My labor costs went up 8%, but I cannot raise the price of a sandwich!” If that we’re true, restaurants wouldn’t be able to charge $3 for a 12oz fountain coke in a glass cup that costs $0.10. Guess what... you can. If you can’t, usually there’s another, self-inflicted reason. If you look back a few years ago, there was a significant tomato price increase and you had similar stories where expensive tomatoes were prompting price increases on the menu.

corodra 7y ago
See, you fell into the problem I'm talking about. I'm not saying the people in the article are correct. I already thought they were short sighted and just bitching about problems they put their heads in the sand about. I'm arguing that this being anecdotal isn't enough to invalidate their claims. Their claims are invalid because of other factors that anyone with their own business can see through. But not for being anecdotal. I have an issue with the HN community using anecdotal as enough justifiable cause to say someone is wrong. Data is just a lot of recorded anecdotes in one place.
- knightofmars 7y ago
  "Data is just a lot of recorded anecdotes in one place." I don't agree with this interpretation. Data is the use of quantitative measures to provide sound evidence for a compelling argument. Anecdotes rely on a "shoot from the hip" approach to describing a position. For example, blaming rising minimum wage as the sole factor in the success or failure of a business ignores a whole spectrum of factors (business rent, business insurance, prevailing local population wages, pricing, quality of food, quality of service, etc). Even if we took all of the anecdotes of these business owners into account and they all said "We had to eliminate staff and hours because of rising minimum wage." it isn't enough to actually support the claim that rising minimum wage causes the problems described. It informs a theory of the effects of rising minimum wage but without all of the supporting evidence and data collection that eliminates possible other influencing factors it is purely anecdotal and should in no way be considered supportive of their claims and therefore does in fact invalidate them. As an example, suppose that along with the city increasing minimum wage they also increased property taxes gradually over time. The property owners decided to then pass the increase in property taxes onto their renters. Because of the increase in both minimum wage and property taxes occurring at the same time it squeezed the owner's profit margins. The owner unable to do anything about the change in rent focuses entirely on the fact that they had to increase what they pay their employees due to the increase in minimum wage. When interviewed about the situation they only talk about the increase in minimum wage as the problem, which is anecdotal and ignores the other influencing factor, increase in rent due to the increase in property taxes.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  I discount anecdotal stuff based on the source and known agenda. When the WSJ laments about minimum wage, those anecdotes will be high noise. When the WSJ has an article about bond trading, anecdotes are usually going to be higher signal.