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u/dtarias

▲ 752 r/Teachers

Student: "Can I do anything to improve my grade?"

Teacher: "It's May..."

Student: "Oh I'm sorry. May I do anything to improve my grade?"

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u/dtarias — 2 days ago
▲ 30 r/fivethirtyeight

I got polled for the first time

After some demographic information, they asked me to rate various people on a scale of 0-100. They started with some people who are well-known nationally, then asked about a bunch of candidates for my Congressional seat primary, only one of whom I'd heard of, and not as a politician. (I said no opinion on all the others.)

They asked me to say who I was planning to vote for. I said I didn't know. Then they asked who I was leaning towards. I said I didn't know again. Then they read me a statement by one of the candidates about immigration (Trump bad, pathway to citizenship, etc.) and asked me again who I was planning to vote for, and then who I was leaning towards. Obviously I still didn't know, since I don't know the candidates. (I'm sure the pollster loved me 😛)

Presumably, pollsters find that a non-trivial number of people change their vote intention/leaning based on hearing one statement from one candidate, or they wouldn't ask it. (Put aside how every other candidate running as a Democrat representing Manhattan is going to say basically the same thing.) Maybe other people have at least heard of these candidates because they watch TV or follow local politics more...although I suspect most people have minimal familiarity with these candidates and are still willing to express express opinions about them, or even vote for them.

Overall, it was a pretty depressing experience, both in terms of how little I know about these people and how easily the voting public's opinion is apparently swayed.

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u/dtarias — 14 days ago
▲ 123 r/fivethirtyeight

IN-01
Lean D → Likely D

MI-04
Likely R → Lean R

MI-08
Lean D → Likely D

MN-01
Safe R → Likely R

NC-11
Likely R → Lean R

OH-09
Lean R → Toss-up

OH-07
Safe R → Likely R

TX-23
Safe R → Likely R

x.com
u/dtarias — 16 days ago
▲ 3 r/trolleyproblem

For someone considering pressing blue, what matters is what proportion of other people they expect to press blue. It is well-known in statistics and social science that people's responses to surveys are highly sensitive to question wording, so changing the wording changes the number of people you would expect to press blue and therefore materially changes the problem.

A lot of people are posting variations as though their framing shows why x choice is wrong in the original problem. It doesn't. Maybe it's wrong in their version, but that doesn't make it wrong in the original. It's a totally new problem.

It is disappointing how many people seem not to get this on a philosophy subreddit.

(My personal strategy for this would be to look at survey data and press blue if we expect at least 50% of people to press blue within the margin of error, and red otherwise. If 8 billion people chose randomly and I picked blue, I'd have a roughly 50% chance of dying and a 1/100,000 chance of saving 4 billion people -- a worthwhile trade IMO. The probabilities are more favorable if others are more likely to pick blue than red -- there's more likely to be a deciding vote in favor of blue than of red in that case.)

u/dtarias — 20 days ago
▲ 497 r/theoffice

My art criticism skills are on the level of Roy or Andy, unfortunately.

Can someone who actually understands art comment on the quality of Pam's work vs. Adolf H*tler's?

u/dtarias — 25 days ago