Hacker News Reader

What a phenomenal piece of journalism. If anything, I think a piece like this can expose the limits of statistical analysis to the unfamiliar. They made a very thorough analysis of something rather boring, all without making untrue statements about the limitations of each approach. I enjoyed this a lot.

View on HN

Either that or a brilliant piece of Nike PR masquerading as journalism. Doesn't Nike also sell $400 basketball shoes that make you jump higher?

Having worked for Nike on ads and in the publishing industry (on branded print content), I am very comfortable saying this is 100% an ad. If it weren’t, it simply wouldn’t be run, because that would justify future Nike ad $$$ to competing publications so as to not clump too much branding in one outlet, a tell-tale sign of a deal. It takes a unique very scenario for a pub like NYT to just hand something like this to a company like Nike; nothing about this even moves that needle. I am similarly comfortable asserting the rough draft was written by Nike in-house, simply because their people have this stuff falling out of their heads already. NYT leading this would cost multitudes in efficiency.

Hello extralego,

I'm not certain what this will mean to you, but if it's worth anything: I am very comfortable saying this article was 100% not an ad, because I'm one of the people who created it. The rough draft was written by me.

Your friend, Kevin Q.

I think it would be illegal to run this without disclosing that it's an ad.

I don’t. It’s done all the time regardless.

so idealistic...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com