

Nate Silver doing AMA on reddit, Tue 2:00pm Eastern - redthrowaway
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/ask-nate-anything/

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untog
I love the concept of Reddit AMAs, but have been consistently disappointed by
the results. It's not the meme-y questions (I actually find the idea of asking
everyone the same inane question oddly interesting) but it seems like
interesting questions/content never get surfaced- the interviewee gets
absolutely overwhelmed with questions and only answers a few.

I'd prefer a system where a notice goes up that Nate Silver is holding an AMA
in 24 hours- people post questions _then_ , and get upvotes/downvotes
according to community interest. Then the AMA-er answers them in order until
they stop.

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ZachPruckowski
Yeah, that's how Slashdot did it (and so far as I know, still does it) -
they'd solicit questions and take a top 10 to the interviewee.

The downside of that is that you largely sacrifice the feeling that you're
talking directly to the interviewee.

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kmfrk
I think it's become a bit of a problem that people make jokes about his
wizardlike ability to "predict" and "calculate" everything.

I hope he takes some time to clear up what it is he actually does, and what
statistics are and aren't capable of.

As much as he's done to draw attention to statistics, a lot of misconceptions
seem to go with the popularity.

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natrius
_"I hope he takes some time to clear up what it is he actually does, and what
statistics are and aren't capable of."_

He wrote a whole book about it.

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/159420411X>

~~~
kmfrk
I hope he clears it up without requiring people to read his book. :)

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Posibyte
If you guys like a bit of humor, I regularly check this for any updated info
on the whether Nate Silver is a witch: <http://isnatesilverawitch.com/>

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nicholassmith
As it's reddit I imagine the top question will probably be, "Nate Silver, are
you actually a witch?".

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Posibyte
Followed by "One horse sized witch, or five witch sized horses?" and "How do
you feel about witch mustaches?"

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altcognito
As a horse with a witch mustache, I approve of this question.

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clicks
You know what's infinitely sadder than Reddit having fun with stupid memes is
Hacker News never missing a chance to look down upon them and deriding them as
inferiors. It's getting to be pretty pathetic and cliche. So let's just tone
down the Reddit-hate, alright guys?

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redthrowaway
But how can we maintain our air of smug superiority if we can't snidely look
down on others?

