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Comment by fluoridation | Hacker News Reader

It's not really a bell curve. There was obviously a downwards trend from 2016 onwards, but 2023 definitely precipitated the fall to zero. Without AI they might have lasted at least a couple more years, or the activity might have stabilized to a new floor greater than zero.

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https://postimg.cc/n9nZGLmb

Goodness of Fit 0.911, Kurtosis -0.849, Skewness: 0.073

It's very much a bell curve

Just because it's approximated by a bell curve doesn't make it a bell curve. There are quite obvious separate phenomena shaping the curve at different times.

> just because it's approximated by a bell curve doesn't make it a bell curve

I'm going to assume this is bait...

Bell curves are probability distributions. This is a time series, so it can’t be a bell curve. It just has the same shape.

Are you discarding the utility of Gaussian functions in analysis simply because the independent variable is time? A Gaussian curve can be used as a descriptive model without claiming that the observations themselves are a probability distribution

The fit does not prove causation, but it does show that the decline was already well described by a trend that began years before generative AI. If the claim is that 2023 created a separate structural break, it's different claim then the title describes

You can't call it a bell curve unless it's from the Charles Murray region. It's just sparkling statistics.

Do you mean "just because it's a bell curve, doesn't make it a normal distribution"?

No, I meant what I said.

Those graphs look nothing alike, except for "going up and then vaguely going down."

I don't know what to say other than learn math

You mean the fall to a thousand questions per month. Now that the volume is low enough someone has a chance of looking at every single one of them, maybe the StackOverflow community can finally collaborate in peace, safe from the onslaught of questions that could be answered by reading the documentation.

I am not sure. I think SO died way before AI and that graph seems incorrect too.

> Without AI they might have lasted at least a couple more years

Nah, their decline was already readily apparent before AI. You only need to go through old discussions and other people noticing it. AI may have accelerated the decay, but the decline happened already largely prior to AI.

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