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The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

blog.okcupid.com

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Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#41

Post by oiuygtfrtghyju »

haroldp wrote: post #39
oiuygtfrtghyju wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to http://www.armyg1.army.mil/HR/docs/demographics/FY05%20Army%... Army: White 63.9%, Black 19.0%, Hispanic 10.3%, Asian 3.8% USA: White 75%, Black 12%, Hispanic 15%, Asian 4% So hispanic is underrepresented in the army and black over represented - of course you would have to balance these by age profile for each group and also consider US overseas territories that can join the army.

Maybe we looked at the wrong service, since the latino profile also mentioned "marines": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HispanicMilitary.jpg

Sorry not American - didn't realize army didn't include marines.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#42

Post by Lukeas14 »

superk wrote: post #16

I thought it was interesting how the largest countries aren't the most nationalistic - no Brazil, Mexico, China, Japan, etc.. I also came away with an identity crisis - #1 good food (Soul) and seeing Mos Def, Lupe Fiasco and Talib Kwali in the top "stuff"... dammit I might be black. -

As a black man it was refreshing to see a "description" of my demographic that I actually related too, as opposed to a stereotype based one that you might find on BET.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#43

Post by zzzmarcus »

aristus wrote: post #37
moron4hire wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you've kept up with this OkCupid series, but there has always been an undercurrent of snide commentary towards Christians specifically and religious people in general. I especially "enjoyed" the break down by race. They admit that the site is primarily American in demographic, but there is no accounting for language proficiency being a barrier to entry to the site for users from non-English speaking c…

Si -- they should have corrected for second languages and proficiency, if they were serious. My big beef is the implication that word length obviously correlates with intelligence instead of, say, pretention.

They probably could have been more scientific with their study as you're pointing out. However, despite the flaws, their conclusions seem to be consistent with actual, scientific studies of the correlation between IQ and Religiosity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence#St....

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#44

Post by moultano »

powrtoch wrote: post #19

On the proper use of this data: Perhaps the easiest way to think of it is that the phrases are predictors for the race/sex, not the other way around. For example, you shouldn't expect every white male you meet to like Van Halen. However if someone says to you "I have a friend who's a big Van Halen fan", you're pretty safe in assuming that the friend is a white male. Likewise, it might be that only 10% of blacks like…

For that reason, I'd be happier if they sorted by KL Divergence instead of just log-odds. That'd give a much better tradeoff between commonality and predictive power.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#45

Post by mshron »

moultano wrote: post #24
mshron wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'll check it out. Thanks!

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#46

Post by lanstein »

Lukeas14 wrote: post #40
proemeth wrote: post #27

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

I noticed this as well and came to the same conclusion considering I've never met a single Red Sox fan on the left coast. Although, it could be that east coasters all rally around one team, where as we're split between the Dodgers and the Giants, which would present a false bias.

You have now.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#47

Post by untamedmedley »

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…

If the goal of black and latino OKC members is to attract members of the opposite sex within their race (which is most likely the case), then it would make sense that they would communicate in their own vernacular.

That is, a black person who is otherwise educated might use a phrase that makes perfect sense to other black people (e.g. "where dey do dat at?"; often used to express confusion at someone's ridiculous behavior) but that isn't clear to the mainstream. Latinos may pepper their profiles with Spanish words.

Asians might do this too if there wasn't so much ethnic/linguistic diversity among the Asian American population. As such, they likely use "safe" mainstream wording.

All this is to say that there are reasons that have nothing to do with intelligence that could have caused this sort of result.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#48

Post by untamedmedley »

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.

RE: Soul Food, one of the comments on the OKC site mentioned that Soul Food applies not only to a style of cuisine, but also to a movie and subsequent spin-off series on HBO.

The reason it pops up so frequently is because the movie is hailed within the black community as one of the few Hollywood productions that presents black people as multi-dimensional humans that deal with a number of problems related to race, class, and life in general. It's a classic.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#49

Post by tuesdays »

patio11 wrote: post #33

There's just so much that they execute well on that I hate to pick any bit of it, but one thing everybody with linkbait should probably do is create something spiritually similar to the bar which pops up when you're done with the article. It is a force multiplier for all pillar content you write, it increases the viral factor, and the way it grabs someone's attention just when their brain is known to be vacant is six…

Interesting, I was thinking the exact opposite, since those bars are all super annoying.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#50

Post by dasil003 »

superk wrote: post #16

I thought it was interesting how the largest countries aren't the most nationalistic - no Brazil, Mexico, China, Japan, etc.. I also came away with an identity crisis - #1 good food (Soul) and seeing Mos Def, Lupe Fiasco and Talib Kwali in the top "stuff"... dammit I might be black. -

I liked that Mos Def and Lupe Fiasco beat out Kanye.
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