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A suitably joking response for a "study" that didn't need to be taken too seriously (and wasn't taken very seriously by most media outlets, including the one th

A suitably joking response for a "study" that didn't need to be taken too seriously (and wasn't taken very seriously by most media outlets, including the one that led a story with it). As we discussed yesterday here on Hacker News[1], the study methodology was not sufficiently validated to convince most people that Facebook will massively lose users, even if all the data were correct. More likely, the study's model was just flat wrong. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7104904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7104904

hatred 13y ago
Some people on the Wall Street did take it up a bit seriously perhaps going by the price movement today.
- poopsintub 13y ago
  My investment account seems to disagree too. The stock was down more than $1 before the market even opened based on that sham study by Princeton.
  - jakewalker 13y ago
    Why are you so sure that was the cause of the price decline?
    - poopsintub 13y ago
      The other big news was that Facebook was testing ads outside of their own platform. The possibility of taking on Google's Adwords and adding more than a few billion dollars in revenue should have increased the price?
      - patmcc 13y ago
        You're layering a lot of your believe about Facebook onto that assumption - maybe people saw that news and concluded Facebook would fail in external ads and lose a bunch of money, which decreased the stock price. It's hardly unambiguously good news (like record profits or something).
  - Sssnake 13y ago
    Irony overload. What was wrong with that paper again? Correlation != causation?
  - jaynos 13y ago
    Pretty much every stock was down yesterday.
- nostromo 13y ago
  Wait... didn't we just learn that correlation != causation? :)
  - yid 13y ago
    Apparently not all of us did :)
  - frostmatthew 13y ago
    http://xkcd.com/552/ http://xkcd.com/552/
- gfodor 13y ago
  S&P was down a lot too. Just one of an infinite number of reasons to not assume price action on a company can be traced back to a given news story.
  - chronic25 13y ago
    No, you're wrong. The article definitely caused price movements.
- richardwhiuk 13y ago
  In the short term, stocks on Wall Street are essentially a random walk.

hatred 13y ago

Some people on the Wall Street did take it up a bit seriously perhaps going by the price movement today.

poopsintub 13y ago
My investment account seems to disagree too. The stock was down more than $1 before the market even opened based on that sham study by Princeton.
- jakewalker 13y ago
  Why are you so sure that was the cause of the price decline?
  - poopsintub 13y ago
    The other big news was that Facebook was testing ads outside of their own platform. The possibility of taking on Google's Adwords and adding more than a few billion dollars in revenue should have increased the price?
    - patmcc 13y ago
      You're layering a lot of your believe about Facebook onto that assumption - maybe people saw that news and concluded Facebook would fail in external ads and lose a bunch of money, which decreased the stock price. It's hardly unambiguously good news (like record profits or something).
- Sssnake 13y ago
  Irony overload. What was wrong with that paper again? Correlation != causation?
- jaynos 13y ago
  Pretty much every stock was down yesterday.
nostromo 13y ago
Wait... didn't we just learn that correlation != causation? :)
- yid 13y ago
  Apparently not all of us did :)
- frostmatthew 13y ago
  http://xkcd.com/552/ http://xkcd.com/552/
gfodor 13y ago
S&P was down a lot too. Just one of an infinite number of reasons to not assume price action on a company can be traced back to a given news story.
- chronic25 13y ago
  No, you're wrong. The article definitely caused price movements.
richardwhiuk 13y ago
In the short term, stocks on Wall Street are essentially a random walk.