Author Topic: Online dating lies  (Read 3170 times)

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Offline iago

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Online dating lies
« on: July 19, 2010, 10:33:22 am »
http://gizmodo.com/5586987/the-big-lies-people-tell-in-online-dating

Interesting stuff. They compare people's height, income, and other factors to the average for the area, and find pretty consistent exaggerations.

Offline Newby

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Re: Online dating lies
« Reply #1 on: July 19, 2010, 12:38:06 pm »
I got to the first chart on height, saw that I was my height was a tiny fraction of the population, got angry about being short and closed the article. Jerk!
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I'd bet that you're currently bloated like a water ballon on a hot summer's day.

That analogy doesn't even make sense.  Why would a water balloon be especially bloated on a hot summer's day? For your sake, I hope there wasn't too much logic testing on your LSAT. 

Offline Rule

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Re: Online dating lies
« Reply #2 on: July 19, 2010, 02:12:27 pm »
The 'implied best fit' is somewhat bullshit, but other than that somewhat interesting read.  It goes on a bit though...

For the bisexual preference, they spent way too much time studying men and women together.  They are obviously different cases, and should have been treated separately. 

My intuition is that a bisexual woman is more likely to be into women, and a bisexual man is more likely to be into men.  In other words, bisexual people are more gay than they are straight.  This is my guess anyway, and if it's right, grouping men and women together in this study, to see who 'bisexual people' seem to like more, is completely useless.


« Last Edit: July 19, 2010, 02:14:48 pm by Rule »

Offline deadly7

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Re: Online dating lies
« Reply #3 on: July 19, 2010, 02:24:07 pm »
The 'implied best fit' is somewhat bullshit, but other than that somewhat interesting read.
Why is that? If the graph (before best fitting) truly is what their population looks like, that data set can accurately be normalized. Far crappier data that looks nothing like a Gaussian distribution has been turned into one.
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Offline Rule

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Re: Online dating lies
« Reply #4 on: July 19, 2010, 02:34:18 pm »
The 'implied best fit' is somewhat bullshit, but other than that somewhat interesting read.
Why is that? If the graph (before best fitting) truly is what their population looks like, that data set can accurately be normalized. Far crappier data that looks nothing like a Gaussian distribution has been turned into one.

The distribution is not Gaussian, its mode is very flat, because people are lying.  I guess if they are playing naive, and assuming that heights ought to be Gaussian distributed, and they are trying to figure out the likely distribution of heights on OKC on this premise (and assuming honesty), then it makes some sense.

I think though it's just some hand waving to make their point look clear to laypeople.

Offline iago

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Re: Online dating lies
« Reply #5 on: July 19, 2010, 02:40:22 pm »
For the bisexual preference, they spent way too much time studying men and women together.  They are obviously different cases, and should have been treated separately. 

My intuition is that a bisexual woman is more likely to be into women, and a bisexual man is more likely to be into men.  In other words, bisexual people are more gay than they are straight.  This is my guess anyway, and if it's right, grouping men and women together in this study, to see who 'bisexual people' seem to like more, is completely useless.
There are people here who could speak to it better than me, but I'll say what I understand from reading different forums and such.

Everybody is on a scale of sexuality. Very few people are 100% straight or 100% gay, but they're close enough that they are effectively whatever they identify as. But bisexuals/pansexuals sit somewhere in the middle of that scale, though not necessarily at the 50% mark. They'll generally lean more one way or the other.

I suspect, though, that a lot of homosexuals will identify themselves as bisexuals, because it's a little easier (I've been told it isn't, though, and I can't speak for others). From the outside, at least, bisexuality seems like a compromise, even though they may prefer the same sex more.

The stats may also be heavily shifted due to people who only make one or two connections on the site, ever, and even though they're bisexual the one or two connections (especially one :) ) would be the same gender.

Offline Sidoh

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Re: Online dating lies
« Reply #6 on: July 19, 2010, 04:43:07 pm »
That's pretty interesting... I'll agree that some of their analysis was a little bit questionable, but the raw results are interesting nonetheless.