Do Econlog Comments Pass the Rational Expectations Test?

I think it makes sense to eliminate those two outliers on the right tail.

With those extreme values removes, the starts will look even better.

Note that observations are not independent: the last commenters could see all previous comments (the first published comment was 200%).

Even though it is not a pure information cascade, you cannot ignore some cascading....

It's true that there's some cascading, but I think that's an implication of rational expectations anyway: they don't exist in a vacuum.

Eliminating the outliers would push the mean down to around 80%.

Your initial question was -

It was 85 degrees in Fairfax last Monday. When I bought an ice cream cone at Ben and Jerry's, I asked the owner how much extra business he was doing that day compared to the typical day in January.

What makes you think the weather had anything to do with it? Is it possible more people were out enjoying the good weather? Was this ice cream shop located in a place people would go to enjoy the good weather? Did ice cream shops in the malls have increased sales?

I would still posit that the sales were correlated to traffic. They could have been generated by a well publicized Elvis sighting in the area as easily as the weather.

just because you asked the question I believed the answer would be different from what would typically be expected.

Remember, you can't observe something without changing it.

I declare myself the winner! Do I get a prize?

Jacob -

Of course you don't win the prize -- hands down, I win.

I'll have a double chocolate mint dip, thank you.