The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’ • Hacker News Board

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#21

Post by superk » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 4:38 PM UTC

aristus wrote: post #8

That last stat about reading level bothers me. "Ok, before anyone gets offended about reading level vs race, let's show you a stat that confirms another stereotype: religious people are stupid! And atheists are smartest of all! Scientifically proven with a reading test based on the lengths of words, and metrics I just made up. And don't worry that almost half of the data points belie my analysis, ha ha ha, it confirm…

Scientifically proven with a reading test based on the lengths of words, and metrics I just made up

Actually they're using the Coleman-Liau Index, a computer readability formula going back to 1975.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#22

Post by jbooth » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 4:51 PM UTC

bmelton wrote: post #18

jbooth wrote: post #11

Yeah Sox!! I'm taking this as scientific evidence that liking the Red Sox makes people more attractive.

Considering this is based on profiles from users at a dating site, wouldn't the inverse be more likely?

Well, one could say it's perceived as attractive, since they're putting it on their profiles.

Of course, I wasn't really attempting to make a serious point. And the Sox are in a distant 3rd in the AL East right now anyways, which presumably explains the downvotes :)

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#23

Post by aristus » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 4:51 PM UTC

superk wrote: post #21

aristus wrote: post #8

That last stat about reading level bothers me. "Ok, before anyone gets offended about reading level vs race, let's show you a stat that confirms another stereotype: religious people are stupid! And atheists are smartest of all! Scientifically proven with a reading test based on the lengths of words, and metrics I just made up. And don't worry that almost half of the data points belie my analysis, ha ha ha, it confirm…

Scientifically proven with a reading test based on the lengths of words, and metrics I just made up Actually they're using the Coleman-Liau Index, a computer readability formula going back to 1975.

The metric about adherence was made up and without explanation of how they categorized people. The Coleman-Liau Index is based on lengths of words, which proves... what, exactly? Many of the "most" religious people scored higher than the ones rated "meh". Also, agnostics are in the middle of the pack.

So what does this chart predict? That certain self-selected religious categories in their dataset correlate with word length in the essays. Is that good statistics, or a confirmation of prejudices, ie, religious people are less intelligent?

With all of those charts they passed over with "no comment", they saw fit to make a joke about a "Comic Sans Bible".

It bothers me because it statistically shaky and baldly prejudiced. I would love to have a conversation about that, and I wish people would engage instead of downvote.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#24

Post by moultano » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 4:59 PM UTC

mshron wrote: post #20

reader5000 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying the results were random. I'm saying they're not really allowing for a "confidence interval" in how many more times a certain group uses a phrase than average. For example if black men use "soul food" 30x greater than average that seems like a solid result. But if it's only 1.01x more than average that seems like noise.

Max Shron, OkCupid Data Scientist here. In an older version of the post, we did have the actual numbers, but they didn't seem to add much. Black women use "soul food" 20 times (!) more frequently than the site-wide average; for black men, "soul food" is 11 times as frequent. AFAIK, nothing we put up for this article is less than twice as frequent for that group as it is for the general (OkC) population.

Just for completeness, you guys should compute g-test statistics for this so that the statisticians see something they're used to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-test

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#25

Post by reader5000 » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 5:05 PM UTC

mshron wrote: post #20

reader5000 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying the results were random. I'm saying they're not really allowing for a "confidence interval" in how many more times a certain group uses a phrase than average. For example if black men use "soul food" 30x greater than average that seems like a solid result. But if it's only 1.01x more than average that seems like noise.

Max Shron, OkCupid Data Scientist here. In an older version of the post, we did have the actual numbers, but they didn't seem to add much. Black women use "soul food" 20 times (!) more frequently than the site-wide average; for black men, "soul food" is 11 times as frequent. AFAIK, nothing we put up for this article is less than twice as frequent for that group as it is for the general (OkC) population.

Fair enough. OKC should really release an api for people to pull data for their own analyses. Make your data viral!

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#26

Post by ttdi » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 5:18 PM UTC

I'm really surprised by how they didn't mention one of the most striking results from the data: Latinos on OKCupid are much more likely to have the word "stationed" in their profile than other demographics. Based on this, it looks like the military contains a large proportion of Latinos ("stationed in [location]"). What are the demographics of the military versus the general population?

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#27

Post by proemeth » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 5:18 PM UTC

Judging by the stats (The Red Sox), we have strong US East Coast bias (due to user base).

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#28

Post by acon » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 5:19 PM UTC

Really interesting, but isn't this more about what white people want other people to think that they like, rather than what they actually like.

It would be interesting to compare this to what they actually like, but I have no idea how to get that data.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#29

Post by oiuygtfrtghyju » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 5:23 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #13

It's interesting, I am asian, like soul food, but it's not something that would occur to me as putting on my profile. Similarly, I would write sashimi (if I ate it anymore) versus sushi, and I suspect that non-asians like sashimi just fine but wouldn't know to put it on... So the statistics point to self-cultural broadcasting, I think, more than preferences.

On the other hand this is a data point.

Knowing that the stuff you like with fish is called "sashimi" and the rice stuff is called "sushi" is a good indicator that you are asian.

Just like knowing that different types of cheese should actually taste different is a good indicator that you are european.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#30

Post by josefresco » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 5:26 PM UTC

acon wrote: post #28

Really interesting, but isn't this more about what white people want other people to think that they like, rather than what they actually like. It would be interesting to compare this to what they actually like, but I have no idea how to get that data.

Facebook maybe? And I don't mean pulling information from a profile but rather gleaning clues from status updates and comments. I would love to see a public vs private list of works these people would assign to themselves.