Graph of the “no smell” complaints for the top three Yankee Candles on Amazon | Hacker News Reader

Graph of the “no smell” complaints for the top three Yankee Candles on Amazon

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The linked graph may be misleading, because more scented candles are sold in the winter. There is still a correlation if the graph is divided by the number of reviews [1], but it is much weaker.

It would be interesting to see the data before 2020.

[1]: https://twitter.com/nick_beauchamp/status/147355576211076710...

Why divide by the number of reviews? They don't sell candles that don't smell.

Because then it's 'percentage of reviews that complain there is no smell', removing the effect of an overall increase in reviews whatever they say.

That's assuming people that smell the candles just fine review at the same rate. I think we know that to not be true, so it's just burying the signal in noise.

If we categorized the reviews and the category of "no smell" increased in relation to the other categories, wouldn't that give a better view at the issue than looking at absolute values? Isn't this is what dividing by all reviews would effectively do, only in the context of a single category (no smell)?

Is it? IANA statistician and wouldn't claim it to be a strong suit, but isn't it only assuming that Smell and Not-smell each stay at the same rate (per sales)?

Then S/N is flat across the year (even as sales vary) iff opinion on smell (regardless of whether it leads to a review) is flat.

I've always called this the refrigerator problem. Reviews of major goods are allowed by the fact that people don't review them when they work as expected, only when they have issues. It's hard to imagine taking the time to review a refrigerator that reliably keeps my things cold. Some people do, but I think most don't.

More than interesting; it would be required to see the data before 2020 to know if this plot is actually meaningful.

Is it as misleading as calling the graph or chart a plot?

Seems a bit click-baity to me. it may be accurate but is exploiting the duality of the word "plot"'s meaning.

This ambiguity was not intended, I have edited my comment.

I meant the HN Title not Your comment, sorry for the confusion.

What absurd idea is it that makes you believe people are more likely to click on “plot” than “chart”? Nobody is reading that word an thinking “Gunpowder, Treason…”

Merry Christmas, thanks for keeping Your comment respectful.

>>>Nobody is reading that word an thinking “Gunpowder, Treason…”

Normally I wouldn't bother responding to a bully, but You are incorrect and I feel there are plenty of people other than myself that would read that in the way You discounted as foolish and unreasonable. Especially given the current times we are living in with a great pandemic that affects sense of smell, an abundance of conspiracy theories on any given subject and the name of the largest corporation in the world in the title.

You may never read a thing in such a way but to call others point of view as "Absurd" is "Arrogant" and "Conceited".

Happy New Years!

Lots of people only leave a review if they experience a problem, so dividing by the number of reviews might not help as much as it seems.

What would be good is to divide it by the number of sales but we don't have that data.

This would have been my assumption too, but the linked charts would suggest that the opposite is true around the holiday season

Unless we think sales or something drop going back before 2020 we are already seeing the key detail, as the peak in the 20/21 and 21/22 boundaries was at the new years but the graph is flat going back to that peak in 19/20.

> It would be interesting to see the data before 2020.

Given the graph you link to starts from January 2020, and it's completely flat until the next winter, where complaints peak in december and gradually decrease until may-june where they reach the pervious baseline, that would be an assertion that 2020 is the odd one out with oddly pungent candles yes?

I wonder if the 'Sweet Nothings' scent is even supposed to smell of anything.

https://twitter.com/UndeniablyAlex/status/146855520298691789...

Notable issues:

1. Trend line doesn't fit very well (fails the eyeball test)

2. We don't see how many complaints occurred in pre-pandemic years, so it's hard to know the baseline comparison.

3. We don't know how the total number of sales compares by season. More candles may have been sold during months of complaint spikes; if we assume each candle has an equal probability of being defective, then an increase in sales will show an increase in complaints.

We also don’t know how many of these candles are counterfeits.

The next tweet responds to your point 3.

https://twitter.com/nick_beauchamp/status/147355576211076710...

For your point 1, this is a smoothed average. I suppose they should have used wider bins, but "failing the eyeball test" doesn't say much. The point isn't to fit the data, but to collate it so that you can clearly see the overall pattern.

There's the additional prior here that we know there were significant increases in COVID infection at the same time, which has a well-studied symptom of loss of taste and smell, that nicely correlates with these.

We also don't know when the candles were actually used compared to when they were bought. I've been gifted plenty of around the holidays that I didn't find an excuse to light for several months.

Would be interested in data before 2020 - is this just a Christmas/Winter trend? The graph only shows a small spike around the first wave. Could actually be just fake sellers on Amazon getting washed into the main supply.

In case you missed it, this data is plotting cold/flu/covid season where people are losing their sense of smell temporarily and blaming the candle sellers.

If you look at the percentage of affected reviews [1], it looks like some customers might be experiencing long term loss of smell. Note how the percentage of affected customers is still considerably higher in mid 2021 (where covid numbers were pretty low) compared to January 2020.

The graphs are based on only about 150 negative reviews though, so I don't know how much you can read into it.

[1]: https://twitter.com/nick_beauchamp/status/147355576211076710...

https://nitter.kavin.rocks/nick_beauchamp/status/14735091061...

I read the thread thoroughly confused why this is news or what a Yankee Candle even is.

Spoiler: The reviewers complaining about the missing smell may have lost their sense of smell due to Covid19.

I also see a number of "things smell bad" questions recently on Quora, though I don't know if it's at all the same thing. It would be interesting to see if there's a correlation.

when I found out what candles were made of and the possible issues linked to them. I do not want to be near them

"Paraffin is a waxy ingredient derived from petroleum. Candles made from the substance are suspected to give off toxic chemicals, like toluene and benzene. [1] Toluene and benzene are known to be carcinogens (cancer causing agents). Toluene specifically induces DNA strand break downs which affect the central nervous system."

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/lee-m2/

Interesting study. It makes sense since pretty much all other popular forms of burning things are linked with cancerous substances. I wonder if beeswax candles are less carcinogenic.

> It makes sense since pretty much all other popular forms of burning things are linked with cancerous substances.

Though note that the 2009 study mentioned was (AFAIK) not published in any peer-reviewed journal, and have provided no review for data.

A more recent study[0] found that

> For the un- scented candles it can be determined that the fuels palm, paraffin, soy and stearin behave very similarly in terms of emissions (see Tables 4 and 5). No individual wax was shown to have a consistently better emission profile than the others.

It did not test for beeswax, but broadly speaking the hierarchical cluster analysis of fuel/fragrance shows much stronger clustering by fragrance than by fuel. There is little reason to think that beeswax would differ significantly.

Though it should be noted that the study was financed by candlemaking associations, and advised by both those and fragrance houses.

Either way sounds to me like burning stuff is bad, no matter what you burn, burnning different shit is mostly just putting (usually kooky) lipstick on a pig.

[0] https://candles.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Measurement-a...

I would love more information on cleaner burning alternatives if anyone has the knowledge handy. I have a family member who insists on burning candles, but I’ve always had concerns about air quality impacts.

> I would love more information on cleaner burning alternatives if anyone has the knowledge handy.

Hydrogen. Good luck making candles out of it though.

That's about it I expect. If you're burning carbon-based fuels in air, you're getting complex carbon-based incomplete combustion byproducts, and the scenting compounds will only make things worse.

The good news though, is unless they're really going way overboard with the amount of candles it's almost certainly innocuous.

Is that an exercise so students learn to question papers? It does look like it.

Those references have absolutely nothing linking candles to cancer, and it's not an obvious link in any way because while fires are linked, candles are very small.

Just as with any other household chemicals (bleach, detergent, cleaners, cooking gas, glues, etc.) - use in well-ventilated environment.

Especially, bleach fumes can easily burn the membranes in the nose and the eye surface.

This looks similar to a graph of Covid19 cases. Given the typical confusion about correlation and causation, the next misinformation campaign might as well be that unscented Yankee Candles cause Covid19.

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