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Comment by pchristensen | Hacker News Reader

He made an ASCII art graph that was worth 1000 words. Worth an upvote.

A sentence a piece for 3 peaks and 3 troughs could cover 100, and the unspoken explanation of the hot air graph generation technique for the other 900?

Without those useful 900 words, the post is just "Yeah, I think there are some roughly seasonal peaks and troughs and it peaked in summer '08. btw it's winter '09, rough times lol."

I think I know why you've gotten negative reactions on HN. You seem to crave the exactness of a compiler yet you dislike nitpicking your statements.

Have you seriously never heard the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words"? It's a very common saying. The point is that an image can convey a lot, not that you need a certain number of significant figures in your image:word ratio. Lighten up.

Would you elaborate on what words the picture had? It is a saying, but that graph doesn't say anything. It twiddles the 'OOH ASCII' bit and pretends to answer the question, but that's all. Honestly, what worth did it convey?

I really liked your first comment. It appears you have a good point about the medical comment, that is, that comment would have been better with a more complete commentary. Now, this graph says more to me than the short paragraph you wrote, it also suggests that hn's comment quality is cyclical and it's just tmporarily in a downturn. There's an implication that the average quality is trending down, but it hasn't been long enough to know, so it isn't worth worrying about. It's just how it is.

Come christmas break some of the college kids will drop some ineresting academic stuff and things will look up.

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