n+1

*N+1*

Editors	Dayna Tortorici, Mark Krotov
Categories	culture, literature, politics
Frequency	Triannually
Founder	Keith Gessen, Benjamin Kunkel, Mark Greif, Chad Harbach, Allison Lorentzen and Marco Roth
Founded	2004
Country	United States
Based in	Brooklyn, NY
Language	English
Website	nplusonemag.com
ISSN	1549-0033

n+1 is a New York–based American literary magazine that publishes social criticism, political commentary, essays, art, poetry, book reviews, and short fiction. It is published in print three times annually with regular articles being published online. Each print issue averages around 200 pages in length.

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Transcription

What I want to do in this video is review much of what we've already talked about and then hopefully build some of the intuition on why we divide by n minus 1 if we want to have an unbiased estimate of the population variance when we're calculating the sample variance. So let's think about a population. So let's say this is the population right over here. And it is of size capital N. And we also have a sample of that population, so a sample of that population. And in its size, we have lowercase n data points. So let's think about all of the parameters and statistics that we know about so far. So the first is the idea of the mean, of the mean. So if we're trying to calculate the mean for the population, is that going to be a parameter or a statistic? Well, when we're trying to calculate it on the population, we are calculating a parameter. We are calculating a parameter. So let me write this down. So this is going to be-- so for the population we are calculating a parameter. It is a parameter. And when we calculate, when we attempt to calculate something for a sample we would call that a statistic-- statistic. So how do we think about the mean for a population? Well, first of all, we denote it with the Greek letter mu. And we essentially take every data point in our population. So we take the sum of every data point. So we start at the first data point and we go all the way to the capital Nth data point. So every data point we add up. So this is the i-th data point, so x sub 1 plus x sub 2 all the way to x sub capital N. And then we divide by the total number of data points we have. Well, how do we calculate the sample mean? Well, the sample mean-- we do a very similar thing with the sample. And we denote it with a x with a bar over it. And that's going to be taking every data point in the sample, so going up to a lower case n, adding them up --so these are the sum of all the data points in our sample-- and then dividing by the number of data points that we actually had. Now, the other thing that we're trying to calculate for the population, which was a parameter, and then we'll also try to calculate it for the sample and estimate it for the population, was the variance, which was a measure of how dispersed or how much of the data points vary from the mean. So let's write variance right over here. And how do we denote any calculate variance for a population? Well, for population, we'd say that the variance --we use a Greek letter sigma squared-- is equal to-- and you can view it as the mean of the squared distances from the population mean. But what we do is we take, for each data point, so i equal 1 all the way to n, we take that data point, subtract from it the population mean. So if you want to calculate this, you'd want to figure this out. Well, that's one way to do it. We'll see there's other ways to do it, where you can calculate them at the same time. But the easiest or the most intuitive is to calculate this first, then for each of the data points take the data point and subtract it from that, subtract the mean from that, square it, and then divide by the total number of data points you have. Now, we get to the interesting part-- sample variance. There's are several ways-- where when people talk about sample variance, there's several tools in their toolkits or there's several ways to calculate it. One way is the biased sample variance, the non unbiased estimator of the population variance. And that's denoted, usually denoted, by s with a subscript n. And what is the biased estimator, how we calculate it? Well, we would calculate it very similar to how we calculated the variance right over here. But what we would do it for our sample, not our population. So for every data point in our sample --so we have n of them-- we take that data point. And from it, we subtract our sample mean. We subtract our sample mean, square it, and then divide by the number of data points that we have. But we already talked about it in the last video. How would we find-- what is our best unbiased estimate of the population variance? This is usually what we're trying to get at. We're trying to find an unbiased estimate of the population variance. Well, in the last video, we talked about that, if we want to have an unbiased estimate --and here, in this video, I want to give you a sense of the intuition why. We would take the sum. So we're going to go through every data point in our sample. We're going to take that data point, subtract from it the sample mean, square that. But instead of dividing by n, we divide by n minus 1. We're dividing by a smaller number. We're dividing by a smaller number. And when you divide by a smaller number, you're going to get a larger value. So this is going to be larger. This is going to be smaller. And this one, we refer to the unbiased estimate. And this one, we refer to the biased estimate. If people just write this, they're talking about the sample variance. It's a good idea to clarify which one they're talking about. But if you had to guess and people give you no further information, they're probably talking about the unbiased estimate of the variance. So you'd probably divide by n minus 1. But let's think about why this estimate would be biased and why we might want to have an estimate like that is larger. And then maybe in the future, we could have a computer program or something that really makes us feel better, that dividing by n minus 1 gives us a better estimate of the true population variance. So let's imagine all the data in a population. And I'm just going to plot them on number a line. So this is my number line. This is my number line. And let me plot all the data points in my population. So this is some data. This is some data. Here's some data. And here is some data here. And I can just do as many points as I want. So these are just points on the number line. Now, let's say I take a sample of this. So this is my entire population. So let's see how many. I have 1 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. So in this case, what would be my big N? My big N would be 14. Big N would be 14. Now, let's say I take a sample, a lowercase n of-- let's say my sample size is 3. I could take-- well, before I even think about that, let's think about roughly where the mean of this population would sit. So the way I drew it --and I'm not going to calculate exactly-- it looks like the mean might sit some place roughly right over here. So the mean, the true population mean, the parameter's going to sit right over here. Now, let's think about what happens when we sample. And I'm going to do just a very small sample size just to give us the intuition, but this is true of any sample size. So let's say we have sample size of 3. So there is some possibility, when we take our sample size of 3, that we happen to sample it in a way that our sample mean is pretty close to our population mean. So for example, if we sampled to that point, that point, and that point, I could imagine in our sample mean might actually said pretty close, pretty close to our population mean. But there's a distinct possibility, there's a distinct possibility, that maybe when I take a sample, I sample that and that. And the key idea here is when you take a sample, your sample mean is always going to sit within your sample. And so there is a possibility that when you take your sample, your mean could even be outside of the sample. And so in this situation-- and this is just to give you an intuition. So here, your sample mean is going to be sitting someplace in there. And so if you were to just calculate the distance from each of this points to the sample mean --so this distance, that distance, and you square it, and you were to divide by the number of data points you have-- this is going to be a much lower estimate than the true variance the true variance, from the actual population mean, where these things are much, much, much further. Now, you're always not going to have the true population mean outside of your sample. But it's possible that you do. So in general, when you just take your points, find the squared distance to your sample mean, which is always going to sit inside of your data even though the true population mean could be outside of it, or it could be at one end of your data, however, you might want to think about it, you are likely to be underestimating, you're likely to be underestimating the true population variance. So this right over here is an underestimate-- underestimate. And it does turn out that if you just-- instead of dividing by n, you divide by n minus 1, you'll get a slightly larger sample variance. And this is an unbiased estimate. In the next video --and I might not to get to it immediately-- I would like to generate some type of a computer program that is more convincing that this is a better estimate, this is a better estimate of the population variance then this is.

Overview

n+1 began in late 2004,^[1] the project of Keith Gessen, Benjamin Kunkel, Mark Greif, Chad Harbach, Allison Lorentzen and Marco Roth. The magazine is described by Gessen as "like Partisan Review, except not dead". It was launched out of a feeling of dissatisfaction with the current intellectual scene in the United States, with the editors citing The Baffler, Hermenaut, and the early years of Partisan Review as inspiration for their magazine.^[2] Each of those magazines embodied the age where the "little magazine" was a veritable institution and a major center of innovation in arts and politics.

Their outlook is most frequently summed up by the last lines of their first issue where the editors proclaimed: "it is time to say what you mean".^[3] Yet in the third issue, critic James Wood responded to criticism of his negative criticism and, singling out this quote from issue 1, stated: "The Editors had unwittingly proved the gravamen of their own critique: that it is easier to criticize than to propose."^[4]

The name n+1, conceived in a moment of frustration, comes from an algebraic expression. Haarbach recalls that "Keith and I were talking, and he kept saying, 'Why would we start a magazine when there are already so many out there?' And I said, jokingly, 'N+1'—whatever exists, there is always something vital that has to be added or we wouldn't feel anything lacking in this world."^[5]

Position

Their mission is somewhat informed by critical theory, to which they readily admit the attraction and limitations. In an article on theory, the editors said: "The big mistake right now would be to fail to keep faith with what theory once meant to us."^[6]

Their stance embraces theory but keeps a careful distance from the academicization of theory: "Theory is dead, and long live theory. The designated mourners have tenure, anyway, so they'll be around a bit. As for the rest of us, an opening has emerged, in the novel and in intellect. What to do with it?" In this vein, they make frequent references to the Frankfurt School, often criticize the commodification of culture, and speak positively of writers such as Don DeLillo.

Content

Each issue of n+1 opens with a section called The Intellectual Situation,^[7] which criticizes aspects of the current intellectual scene. For example, in the first issue, they called McSweeney's a "regressive avant-garde";^[8] in Issue 18, the editors criticize "the Rage Machine" in which "tech corporations beg you to say your piece for the sake of content-generation, free publicity, hype, and ad sales".^[9] They have also criticized The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, and literary figures such as Dale Peck. This is followed by a short Politics section. Most of each issue consists of fiction and essays. Issues then close with a review section, which consists of reviews of books, intellectual figures, and pop phenomena.

Critical response

The magazine has received mixed reception. Generally, n+1's detractors decry the editors' youth and perceived elitism. As the magazine is purportedly an effort to engage a generation in a struggle against the current literary landscape, such elitism seems counterintuitive to the ideals upon which the magazine was founded. The New Criterion critically asked, "is your journal really necessary?"^[10] and accused them of exaggerating their own importance. The Times Literary Supplement wryly satirized Kunkel's quote, "We're angrier than Dave Eggers and his crowd", and compared that quote against their third issue's unsigned article about and titled "Dating".^[11] Literary editor Gordon Lish has called the magazine a "crock of shit".^[12]

Others have appreciated these very qualities, writing favorably of the boldness of the project itself and the sincerity and enthusiasm of its contributors. Critic A. O. Scott of The New York Times commented on this in a feature article on the new wave of young, intellectual publications in a September 2005 issue of The New York Times Magazine, saying that n+1 was trying to "organize a generational struggle against laziness and cynicism, to raise once again the banners of creative enthusiasm and intellectual engagement" and that it had a feel that was "decidedly youthful, not only in [its] characteristic generational concerns — the habit of nonchalantly blending pop culture, literary esoterica and academic theory, for instance, or the unnerving ability to appear at once mocking and sincere — but also in the sense of bravado and grievance that ripples through their pages".^[13] In a review of Gessen's novel All the Sad Young Literary Men, Joyce Carol Oates referenced the author's founding of "the spirited intellectual literary journal n+1".^[14]

Vox described that magazine as "Deliberately anachronistic like an artisanal pickle shop, but with a cosmopolitan flair — like a pickle shop that also sells kimchi."^[15]

Books

n+1 Research Branch Small Books Series

Beginning in 2006, with the publication of PS 1 Symposium: A Practical Avant-Garde, n+1 introduced the n+1 Research Branch Pamphlet Series, later known as the n+1 Research Branch Small Books Series. This self-published series expands on the concerns of the magazine, and focuses on topics as disparate as "life and reading" in early adulthood, feminism, hipster culture, and the collapse of America's financial system. There are six titles in the series in addition to A Practical Avant-Garde: What We Should Have Known: Two Discussions, What Was the Hipster: A Sociological Investigation, The Trouble is the Banks: Letters to Wall Street, No Regrets: Three Discussions, and "Buzz", a play by Benjamin Kunkel. No Regrets, comprising conversations among women writers about their reading, was praised by NPR as "intimate and erudite",^[16] but The New Republic, gathering its own panel of women staff writers, criticized the book's discussion of a so-called "secret canon" as being insular.^[17]

The Financial Crisis and Occupy

Diary of a Very Bad Year

In addition to the Research Branch's The Trouble is the Banks, the n+1 has published several works concerning the financial crisis and the Occupy movement. In 2010, n+1 collaborated with Harper Perennial to publish Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager, a series of one-on-one interviews between Gessen and "a very charming, very intelligent"^[18] member of the finance industry that explore the origins and effects of the financialization of the economy.^[18] Some sections of the book had been published online and in the magazine from 2007 to 2010.^[19] New York Times book reviewer Dwight Garner called the book "thoughtful, funny and unpretentious"—"an urbane if frazzled chronicle of shock and despair".^[20]

With direction from Astra Taylor and Sarah Leonard,^[21] n+1 built on this discussion of the financial crisis and its fallout with the publication of the Occupy! Gazette, "a semi-regular, forty-page tabloid newspaper inspired by the Occupy movement".^[22] The Gazette featured interviews and panels, as well as firsthand reporting from Occupy demonstrations around the United States. n+1 ultimately published four issues of the Occupy! Gazette, in addition to one special issue published in May 2014, "Free Cecily!", which covered the arrest and trial of Occupy organizer and protester Cecily McMillan.

In 2011, in collaboration with Verso, n+1 published Occupy! Scenes from an Occupied America, edited by Astra Taylor and Keith Gessen, along with "editors from n+1, Dissent, Triple Canopy and The New Inquiry". The book featured commentary from Taylor, Mark Greif, Nikil Saval, and Rebecca Solnit, alongside reprinted remarks made at Zucotti Park by Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek. Taylor, Greif, Gessen, and others contributed segments entitled "Scenes from an Occupation," which reported the day-to-day conditions at Occupy Wall Street; "Scenes from Occupied Atlanta" and "Scenes from Occupied Boston", among others, reported from their respective locations around the country. London School of Economics professor Jason Hickel praised the book for its timeliness and "moments of excellent insight", but noted that the speed with which "Occupy!" was published limited the depth of its analysis.^[23]

Co-publishing

Faber and Faber

n+1, in 2014, initiated a publishing partnership with Farrar, Straus and Giroux subsidiary Faber and Faber. The first publication, MFA vs NYC:Two Cultures of American Fiction, explores fiction's gravitation toward the academy in over a dozen essays from writers including David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Elif Batuman, and Fredric Jameson. The editor of MFA vs NYC, Chad Harbach, introduces the book with his essay of the same title from Issue 10 of the magazine. The New York Times praised it as a "serious, helpful and wily book," citing the various and intimate insights into the writing world that the book provides, from its "excellent miniature portraits of Frank Conroy and Gordon Lish" to "its gossip and confessional essays".^[24] MFA vs NYC has inspired various responses throughout the literary world, notably Junot Diaz's essay in The New Yorker, "MFA vs POC".^[25] There are two additional books in the Faber and Faber series: Happiness, an anthology of selected works from the first ten years of n+1, published in September 2014; and City by City, a collection of some previously published pieces from n+1's online series of the same name (2015).

Footnotes

^ Zachary Petit (May 12, 2010). "12 Literary Journals Your Future Agent is Reading". Writer's Digest. Retrieved December 4, 2015.
^ Rowland, Fred; et al. (2013). "n+1: The Temple University Libraries Interview". Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication. 2 (1): 1111. doi:10.7710/2162-3309.1111.
^ They argue that their mission is to create a sense of intellectual cohesion. Kunkel said: "There's a tendency to ghettoize things that are important to us — there's fiction, there's essays and criticism, there's politics — and you can go and find journals about each of these things, but you can't go and find journals about all of those things."
^ Wood, James (2005). "A Reply to the Editors". N+1. 1 (3): 129.
^ Hodara, Susan. "Intellectual Entrepreneurs – A highbrow journal rises in an era of sound bites". Harvard Magazine. Harvard University. Retrieved March 13, 2014.
^ "Death is Not the End". n+1. Archived from the original on September 6, 2006. Retrieved August 24, 2006.
^ The Intellectual Situation.
^ "A Regressive Avant-Garde". n+1. July 15, 2004.
^ "Against the Rage Machine". n+1. November 25, 2013.
^ "The artificial gravity of n+1". Stefan Beck. Retrieved September 28, 2013.
^ "Why We Love TLS". Mark Sarvas. Retrieved August 24, 2006.
^ Nazaryan, Alexander (June 19, 2014). "A Flash of Gordon". Newsweek. Newsweek LLC. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
^ Scott, A. O. (September 11, 2005). "Among the Believers". The New York Times Magazine. The New York Times Company. Retrieved August 24, 2006.
^ Oates, Joyce Carol (May 1, 2008). "Youth!". New York Review of Books. NYREV, Inc. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
^ Yglesias, Matthew (December 9, 2014). "5 new magazines with small circulations and big ideas". Vox. Retrieved March 14, 2022.
^ "Book News: 'Stoner' Created Little Buzz In 1965, But Ignites In 2013". NPR.org. December 9, 2013.
^ Mimi Dwyer (December 11, 2013). "n+1's No Regrets Pamphlet: 3 Recent Graduates Respond – New Republic". New Republic.
^ ^a ^b Sofia Groopman (August 3, 2010). "Keith Gessen and Diary of a Very Bad Year". The Paris Review.
^ "HFM". n+1.
^ "Here's Why the Cookie Crumbled". The New York Times. July 14, 2010.
^ "Read Our New Gazette". n+1. October 21, 2011.
^ "Occupy!". n+1.
^ "Book Review: Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America, edited by Astra Taylor and Keith Gessen". LSE Review of Books.
^ "Creative Writing, via a Workshop or the Big City". The New York Times. February 26, 2014.
^ Junot Díaz (April 30, 2014). "MFA vs. POC". The New Yorker.

External links

Official website

This page was last edited on 11 May 2024, at 05:39

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