The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXVII

[Cutlass]

I think most people who use it are considering just the straight numbers. If there actually were something resembling an objective measure of beauty, then a population would fall into a bell curve. But I don't see people in casual conversation thinking that way.

 

[Traitorfish]

See, I'd assume so, but it seems that most people would take a 2 to describe somebody pug-ugly and a 9 to describe somebody gorgeous, which suggests a bell curve. I think? I might be wrong.

 

[Cutlass]

With a subjective description like that, the numbers assigned are still the same, whether it's a straight line or a bell. For it to be legitimately a bell curve, they'd have to be placing a lot more towards the center. When in practice I don't many people are thinking that way.

 

[cardgame]

When people rate attractiveness on a 1-10 scale, is that assumed to be bell curved or just straight percentiles? Because obviously that makes a big difference at the 1-3 and 8-10 end of the scale, but even for the 4-7 middlers the distinction could knock it a point one way or the other.

Depends if you're talking to a man or woman.

But more to the point, middling bell-curve numbers aren't very conversation-worthy, so no, they wouldn't make much of an appearance.

 

[Traitorfish]

Depends if you're talking to a man or woman.

You think so? That hadn't occurred to me. Which do you think tend to use a bell curve and which straight percentiles?

 

[Kennigit]

Ive never heard it as percentile, but people dont have a statistcally rigorous methodology for assigning the numbers. It probably is a bell curve with mean 7 and 95% between 3 and 9.

Edit: not mean 7, but probably um most frequent occurence as 7.

 

[cybrxkhan]

It probably is a bell curve with mean 7 and 95% between 3 and 9.

For most folks, that appears to be the case from my experience as well.

Me, though, I tend to be harsher with my judgements.

Much harsher.

But then again I tend to be pretty harsh when I rate anything, whether it's attractiveness or food or fiction/media.

 

[cardgame]

You think so? That hadn't occurred to me. Which do you think tend to use a bell curve and which straight percentiles?

 

[Kennigit]

online profile statistics is not exactly the best or most consistent way to try to measure physical attraction, but I guess that shows a trend.

 

[Mise]

That's incredible... I never would have thought they'd have such a difference.

 

[Hygro]

Except suddenly it alllll makes sense.

 

[Mise]

Would be interesting to see the distribution for individuals within each star rating. E.g. people who are rated 1 on average have a certain distribution of ratings, which obviously averages out to 1, but you might expect, say, 5% of the opposite sex to rate them 5 star.

 

[The_J]

Graphs are from okcupid, right?
(guessing from the URL)

But yeah, Mise is probably right on that.
Just talked yesterday with one of my buddies about the girls around and recent attempts, and the conclusion was that we'll never get into a conflict there, because we don't have the same taste at all.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Except suddenly it alllll makes sense.

What makes sense?

 

[Borachio]

I can't see it being a bell curve, myself.

I generally rate people very highly on attractiveness. On a scale of 1 to 10 (which I don't use, but if I did), I'd place most people between 7 and 10. With the occasional minger coming in at 3 or 4. And they'd have to be absolutely awful: unkempt, squint-eyed and vicious. And then I'd just feel sorry for them.

 

[Takhisis]

What do they mean by 'female→male message'?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I think it correlates messages send from females to males with attractiveness.
I.e. the most unattractive group - even though it is 25% of the whole male population - gets only 10% of the messages send from females to males.

 

[cardgame]

It's a bit irrelevant to the actual curve, but I couldn't find a graph without the messaging bit.

 

[Takhisis]

What types of messages are they? SMS?

 

[Mise]

Messages sent on OkCupid, which is a dating website.