Good news: 2016 is coming to a close.
Bad news: “2016” is an arbitrary construct without causal agency. The decline of civilization is not the calendar’s fault, and it’s unlikely to get any better in 2017. Only one thing is guaranteed to get better in 2017 – this blog. Because you will make it better.
At the bottom of the post is a short, multiple choice, anonymous survey, designed to give me feedback on improving Putanumonit. I have very little information on what my readers like and dislike. When 1,000 people read my post and 5 of them leave comments, I have no clue what the other 995 thought of it. Please answer as many questions as you can whether you’re a dedicated reader or just discovered Putanumonit for the first time.
If you are an enthusiastic reader and want to be involved in Putanumonit beyond just seeing the finalized posts, you can check out In Cahoots with Putanumonit but please come back afterwards and fill out the survey. The more honest your responses are, the more you’ll like this blog in 2017.
2017 Reader Survey
Each question is a separate poll, so don’t forget to hit Vote after answering each one.
How much of Putanumonit have you read? I write about 4 posts a month, and 53 total so far.
Many of my posts (but not all of them) fall into 3 broad categories:
- “Lifestyle” posts are about applying math to your own life, like dating, shopping or playing the lottery.
- “Research” posts are about sports, science and other issues that don’t directly affect your life.
- “Political rationality” posts are about staying sane on questions of politics, policy and Trump.
My longer posts are in the 3000-5000 word range, which takes 10-15 minutes to read.
I often write about contrarian and speculative ideas that I’m not fully confident in and have not thoroughly researched.
I often get into complex explanations of math and statistics, with equations and charts.
Please think of what affects your decision to share any post (on Reddit, Facebook etc.) besides simply whether you enjoyed reading it.
What other suggestions you have for improving Putanumonit? You can write them in anonymously in the poll below, email me or (preferably) leave a comment.
See y’all in 2017,
Jacob.
PUTANUMONIT 
Suggestion: allow more text in the anonymous suggestion box.
More seriously, I’m not (yet) a fan of the ‘big serious topic’ posts (recently, e.g., ‘Climbing the Horseshoe’, ‘Immoral Sentiments’, ‘Zero
Agents’). The issue is just that the background themes are pretty familiar to anyone who’s read SSC, Gelman, Haidt, etc. I most enjoyed posts on topics I don’t normally read about, like the football/soccer and dating posts.
‘New to me’ obviously depends on the reader, but in general the ‘newest’ issues will be those where you have some domain-specific knowledge that your average reader won’t. (Cf SSC’s psychiatry posts, topics I don’t get anywhere else.) For example, I’d be interested to read more on finance issues (e.g. the EMH post) or other topics where you can leverage some comparative advantage.
Good luck for 2017!
LikeLike
When would the poll results be published?
LikeLike