Popularity Prediction of Reddit Texts

Abstract

Popularity prediction is a useful technique for marketers to anticipate the success of marketing campaigns, to build recommendation systems that suggest new products to consumers, and to develop targeted advertising. Researchers likewise use popularity prediction to measure how popularity changes within a community or within a given timespan. In this paper, I explore ways to predict popularity of posts in reddit.com, which is a blend of news aggregator and community forum. I frame popularity prediction as a text classification problem and attempt to solve it by first identifying topics in the text and then classifying whether the topics identified are more characteristic of popular or unpopular texts. This classifier is then used to label unseen texts as popular or not dependent on the topics found in these new posts. I explore the use of Latent Dirichlet Allocation and term frequency-inverse document frequency for topic identification and naïve Bayes classifiers and support vector machines for classification. The relation between topics and popularity is dynamic-topics in Reddit communities can wax and wane in popularity. Despite the inherent variability, the methods explored in the paper are effective, showing prediction accuracy between 60% and 75%. The study contributes to the field in various ways. For example, it provides novel data for research and development, not only for text classification but also for the study of relation between topics and popularity in general. The study also helps us better understand different topic identification and classification methods by illustrating their effectiveness on real-life data from a fast-changing and multipurpose website. v

Physician Leader, Humble Thyself: Balancing Narcissism and Humility in Healthcare Leadership

“…When describing his transition from former star player to coach, Jason Kidd reminds us, “You can’t say, ‘this is the way I would do it,’ because everybody is different. My job is to help everyone recognize their strengths and put them in a position to be successful.” 1 Narcissism in balance with humility—that may be the true secret ingredient we are missing.…”

“…Rather than being taught to be collaborative, physicians are more traditionally trained in “command and control” practice models and see themselves as “heroic lone healers.” 6 As such, physician leadership development generally occurs outside traditional medical training and often is focused on unlearning some of these traits that conspire against successful leadership. Much like Jason Kidd, successful physician leaders must learn to get over themselves 1 …”

“…As an NBA coach, however, success has been harder to find. Immediately after his playing career, Kidd’s lone season with the Brooklyn Nets was defined by clashes with management and player criticisms that he was “overly aggressive and harsh.” 1 …”

“…So, why is it so hard for former superstar players to ascend to the top as coaches, whereas it is seemingly easier for former role players like sharpshooter Steve Kerr or little-used defensive specialist Phil Jackson? In Kerr’s assessment, it is “harder for superstar players to really understand how hard the game is for the lesser players.” In pursuit of excellence as a coach, Jason Kidd “got over himself.” 1 Can physician leaders do the same?…”