The eigenvector of “Why we moved from language X to language Y”
The research methodology in this blog post is fundamentally flawed. The author only counts how many people move from X to Y, but he doesn't count how many of them do not move at all. The whole diagonal of his (sample) transition matrix are actually missing values, but he treats them as zeroes. This greatly distorts the equilibrium distribution. As a result, he misinterprets each equilibrium probability as the "future popularity" of a language as well, when it at best only represents the future popularity of a language <i>among those who constantly switch their languages</i>.