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The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

blog.okcupid.com

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Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#61

Post by xiongchiamiov »

untamedmedley wrote: post #47
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 beh…

My technical writing professor always told us to try and reduce the complexity of our writing (I think she used Flesh Kincaid). Perhaps more of us white people have had similar teachers, and took their advice to heart.*

* Unlikely, but hey, I might as well bring it up, since we're talking about flaws in the analysis.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#62

Post by Natsu »

oiuygtfrtghyju wrote: post #29
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.

> 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.

Probably true statistically, but there are plenty of non-Asians like me who know the difference (sashimi is the raw fish, sushi is that which has sushi rice). But I'll never show up on their tests because I don't have an OKCupid profile and neither food is a favorite (they're okay, but definitely not favorites).

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#65

Post by ohashi »

ohashi wrote: post #64
awongh wrote: post #63

seventh word for asian males: software developer....

Yeah I found that a bit strange... mechanical engineer was there too... Also, no Japanese? Many of the other major asian countries were broadcasting.

a software engineer #3 for indians.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#66

Post by zzzmarcus »

aristus wrote: post #53
zzzmarcus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... .

Sure, it seems to agree with those studies. But let's suppose that the religion vs word length chart is a valid measure of intelligence. Are you then prepared to defend the same conclusion about the race vs word length chart? Or will you start looking for confounding factors, eg, Latinos trend Catholic? If so, think about why you accepted the religion claim on its face, but examined the race claim more carefully.

I'm not defending anything, just pointing out as a matter of interest that there's a consistency between religion/word length, which OKCupid implies is an indication of intelligence in their article, and religion/intelligence in actual academic studies.

So, there is at least an apparent correlation between word length and intelligence for whatever that's worth.

If you're trying to draw me into a race/intelligence discussion based on possible implications of the correlation... no thanks.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#67

Post by narkee »

reader5000 wrote: post #60
narkee wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do have an enormous sample size. Much, much larger than any rigorous scientific studies based on getting undergrads to fill out surveys. They've done similar analyses for things like self-reported heights, and photos: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in-online... http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/dont-be-ugly-by-accident/

Not really sure why this is getting upvoted and mine down, but it doesn't matter how large their sample size is since it's restricted to people who voluntarily sign up for an online dating website, specifically okcupid. As okc becomes more mainstream the data is more valid for the general population. But sample size is irrelevant here.

Fair enough. Although the data is presented in a non-rigorous, light-hearted manner, I guess a more accurate title would be "Stuff single, web savvy white people like"

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#68

Post by moultano »

mshron wrote: post #45
moultano wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I think it should actually give you better results. It's monotonic in kl divergence, and does a much better job of taking into account how common the feature is rather than just how different it is. You no longer need to do things like throwing out phrases that appear less than x times if you use it.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#69

Post by lazyjeff »

moultano wrote: post #44
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.

You have a valid point but I'm guessing they avoided kl-divergence because it's 1) harder to explain 2) it's not symmetric, e.g. kl(asian, white) != kl(white, asian) 3) it needs a smoothing function for comparing distributions where not every element is in both distributions.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#70

Post by meelash »

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…

At least for Muslims, there is an obvious flaw since Islam forbids dating. So people that self-identified as "very serious" are pretty much by-definition not that. And since it is, among all the practices of Muslims, one that is popularly known and probably even overemphasized (relative to other practices), a large population of those that self-identified as "somewhat serious" are probably guilty of being a bit generous with themselves.

At the end of the day, of course, correlation does not imply causation. If either religious people get their panties in a bunch and overly-defensive or irreligious people start gloating, both are simply demonstrating that their dogma is overriding their intelligence.

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