omslin comments on New "Best" comment sorting system - Less Wrong

25 Post author: matt 02 July 2012 11:08AM

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Comment author: omslin 03 July 2012 06:45:17AM *  5 points [-]

If you use the Bayes approach with a Beta(x,y) prior, all you do is for each post add x to the # of upvotes, add y to the # of downvotes, and then compute the % of votes which are upvotes. [1]

In my college AI class we used this exact method with x=y=1 to adjust for low sample size. Someone should switch out the clunky frequentist method reddit apparently uses with this Bayesian method!

[1] This seems to be what it says in the pdf.