Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
You might do this by finding usernames and grepping or searching for
100 random choices, one at a time. For each user, create a plot like the
one in
Figure 6-2
.
Figure 6-2. An example of a way to visually display user-level data
over time
Now try to construct a narrative from that plot. For example, we could
say that user 1 comes the same time each day, whereas user 2 started
out active in this time period but then came less and less frequently.
User 3 needs a longer time horizon for us to understand his or her
behavior, whereas user 4 looks “normal,” whatever that means.
Let's pose questions from that narrative:
• What
is
the typical or average user doing?
• What does variation around that look like?
• How would we classify users into different segments based on
their behavior with respect to time?
• How would we quantify the differences between these users?
