“The winners of the L.A. Times book prizes will be announced at an awards ceremony April 19, the evening before the L.A. Times Festival of Books, April 20-21. Held on USC’s campus in Bovard Auditorium, the awards are open to the public; tickets will be made available in late March.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Who is your best literary friend? In the book trailer embedded above, three pairs of literary friends talk about their relationships. The interviews include Nate Silver and Arikia Milikan; Kate Bolick and Daniel Smith; and Jenny 8. Lee and Eric Lee. 

The trailer promotes Friendfluence: The Surprising Ways Friends Make Us Who We Are by Carlin Flora Here’s more about the book: 

Discover the unexpected ways friends influence our personalities, choices, emotions and even physical health in this fun and compelling examination of friendship, based on the latest scientific research and ever-relatable anecdotes. Friendfluence surveys online-only pals, friend break-ups, the power of social networks, envy and the dark side of amiable ties, and many varieties of friendship. Told with warmth, scientific rigor, and a dash of humor, Friendfluence not only illuminates and interprets the science but draws on clinical psychology and philosophy to help readers evaluate and navigate their own important friendships.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Nate Silver

Silver defied pundits and gave Mitt Romney an eight percent chance of winning the election last year. His accurate predictions about the election drove his book to the top of Amazon’s charts.

Read along on Reddit right now: “we help New York Times readers cut through the clutter of this data-rich world. I also wrote about the world of predictions in “The Signal and the Noise” which you can buy at Amazon. Here’s verification. Ask me anything, although I’m especially interested in talking about our forecasts of the 2012 election, how polling is changing, America’s budgetary politics and sports. I’ll start answering questions at 2 P.M. Eastern time.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The real number to be watching today is Nate Silver’s Amazon book ranking.

— Rex Sorgatz (@fimoculous) November 6, 2012

FiveThirtyEight blogger and author Nate Silver gave Mitt Romney an eight percent chance of winning the election yesterday. Since making his accurate predictions about the election, The Signal and the Noise has shot up from No. 15 at Amazon to No. 2 among all books.

He wrote:  ”I hope you’ll excuse the cliché, but it’s appropriate here: in poker, making an inside straight requires you to catch one of 4 cards out of 48 remaining in the deck, the chances of which are about 8 percent. Those are now about Mr. Romney’s chances of winning the Electoral College, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast. As any poker player knows, those 8 percent chances do come up once in a while.”

In recent weeks, Silver has defended his statistical methods against all sorts of attacks, and his book has spent 50 days in the Amazon Top 100 of all books. Writer Rex Sorgatz made an interesting point yesterday. Silver is staking his reputation as a blogger and an author on this election, and Sorgatz thinks ”the real number to be watching today is Nate Silver’s Amazon book ranking.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.