The use case could vary from person to person. When you think about it, hacker news has large enough data set ( and one that is widely accessible ) to allow all sorts of fun analyses. In a sense, the appeal is:

who knows what kind of fun patterns could emerge

The problem with HN isn't that the patterns are hard to discern, it's that no one wants to acknowledge them.

Oh? With few exceptions, I found people more willing to agree to an argument than anywhere else. Anything in particular you can share?