Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. And Poll Results.
And no, it's not a post about the America presidential race (although I guess any argument about irrational assessments of subjective values that might lie behind this rant would apply there too).
All things are relative, and so we instinctively compare ourselves to others. Various networking sites (Facebook being my own personal experience, but no doubt many other such sites have similar tools) "facilitate" this process by adding a layer of anonymity and statistics to it all. It's an excellent way of producing graphs and charts and all sorts of other fun things that look significant, but ultimately are not.
Thus, my friends have rated me as a reliable, organized chap (which is blatantly untrue) but rather disappointingly haven't rated my hair as all that good (only 40% success rate there - on the plus side my hair is apparently my best feature) Seems only one person has ever been asked how crazy I am (and readers of this blog will surely know the answer: very).
Bizarrely, I'm apparently #10 for both "more loyal" (with a 1:0 win/loss ratio) and better singer (with a 0:3 win/loss ratio). I'm clearly not a better singer than much more than a cat that's been skinned in most of the many ways it's apparently possible to skin one. I'm ranked #12 for "better sense of humor" but #21 for "funnier", how does that work folks? I can be a cynical misery at times I know but I rather thought my sense of humor was one of my few social strengths. I know it's not shone through so much recently though.
My main weaknesses (both with 0:3 ratios) are apparently singing as mentioned above, and being happy (or rather, not being - too many of my facebook friends also read my blog I think). I also score poorly on all those questions I'm frequently forced to skip such as "more attractive", "rather kiss", "a better body" etc (although I do have a single success on "rather sleep with", so I pity the poor sap I was being compared against on that occasion!).
Of course, all this is plagued quite badly by the issues of a small sample size. Most categories have only a small handful of votes, so the numbers aren't especially robust.
You can do the reverse, and group up your friends based on how well they've scored from just your own rankings. Apparently I don't have enough female friends because they all manage to fit into the "most desirable" box. Presumably because I rated their eyes as better than my chunky chemist friend at some point.
All things are relative, and so we instinctively compare ourselves to others. Various networking sites (Facebook being my own personal experience, but no doubt many other such sites have similar tools) "facilitate" this process by adding a layer of anonymity and statistics to it all. It's an excellent way of producing graphs and charts and all sorts of other fun things that look significant, but ultimately are not.
Thus, my friends have rated me as a reliable, organized chap (which is blatantly untrue) but rather disappointingly haven't rated my hair as all that good (only 40% success rate there - on the plus side my hair is apparently my best feature) Seems only one person has ever been asked how crazy I am (and readers of this blog will surely know the answer: very).
Bizarrely, I'm apparently #10 for both "more loyal" (with a 1:0 win/loss ratio) and better singer (with a 0:3 win/loss ratio). I'm clearly not a better singer than much more than a cat that's been skinned in most of the many ways it's apparently possible to skin one. I'm ranked #12 for "better sense of humor" but #21 for "funnier", how does that work folks? I can be a cynical misery at times I know but I rather thought my sense of humor was one of my few social strengths. I know it's not shone through so much recently though.
My main weaknesses (both with 0:3 ratios) are apparently singing as mentioned above, and being happy (or rather, not being - too many of my facebook friends also read my blog I think). I also score poorly on all those questions I'm frequently forced to skip such as "more attractive", "rather kiss", "a better body" etc (although I do have a single success on "rather sleep with", so I pity the poor sap I was being compared against on that occasion!).
Of course, all this is plagued quite badly by the issues of a small sample size. Most categories have only a small handful of votes, so the numbers aren't especially robust.
You can do the reverse, and group up your friends based on how well they've scored from just your own rankings. Apparently I don't have enough female friends because they all manage to fit into the "most desirable" box. Presumably because I rated their eyes as better than my chunky chemist friend at some point.
Labels: Facebook
posted by Sarum at
Friday, February 29, 2008
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