
The average faces of women in different countries - creamyhorror
http://myscienceacademy.org/2013/09/22/the-average-women-faces-in-different-countries/
======
jared314
The actual artist's methodology:

[http://pmsol3.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/world-of-averages-
eur...](http://pmsol3.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/world-of-averages-
europeave/#comment-7085)

> I used this site:
> [http://www.faceresearch.org/demos/average](http://www.faceresearch.org/demos/average)

> I used no one I thought was under 20 and no one I thought was over 50. I
> used any internet source I could to get about 15-20 pictures each composite.
> The hardest thing is finding that many pictures of good frontal shots. Most
> people take pictures at an angle.

> It is also not always easy to find pictures of every nationality. At times I
> would use Google Image and type in the 10 most common last names for a
> nationality. For Latin America, where names are shared, I would use the most
> common last names for that country and put the country name in the search. I
> would try to verify that the person is at least in that country or from it
> (not easy). That was especially tricky with the UK (English, Welsh, etc) and
> Irish.

> Strangely for some nationalities it was easier to find men than women or
> vice versa. For example, very easy to find pictures of Italian men, but not
> women. It is very easy to find pictures of French women, but not men, etc.

> Anyway, for every composite I think I viewed at least a couple of thousand
> photos. :-(

------
fchollet
The fact that some very individually distinctive features are still present on
some pictures (why do some of these faces smile, and some don't?), I would
guess that the number of pictures that was averaged was ridiculously low, 10
maybe.

The result is therefore all about the original ~10 pictures that were
chosen... and it is certainly not an "average face" (which would require a
statistically representative sample, north of 10k for most countries). Chose
10 other people from the same ethnicity and you get a different face.

~~~
fleitz
This is incorrect, a sample of 10 is statistically representative but has a
high margin of error. If you can live with a high MOE then you can use very
small samples, often small studies of 10 are used in medicine to see whether
further studies should occur.

Upon doing 5 minutes of research the data appears to come from FaceResearch
which has many thousands of images on file, seems like any issues would be
related to sample biases and not sample size.

~~~
azakai
10 is ok for measuring _a single variable_ (although even then, you probably
want something like 30, even in the social sciences).

But for faces, it is possible that there are large numbers of relevant
variables (various features of the eyes, nose, etc. can all vary separately).
That increases the sample size you need to get decent results.

~~~
fleitz
You're allowed to reuse the same sample for multiple variables, pollsters do
it all the time, they'll phone one person and ask them 10 different questions.

The fact that you're measuring faces as opposed to political leanings does not
affect the underlying statistical methods. Confounding variables only come
into play when you're doing regressions, and/or trying to prove causation.
Since they aren't attempting to explain why the faces look like this there
aren't any confounding variables.

~~~
azakai
That pollsters do something does not make it valid! ;) Yes, they do ask dozens
of questions of a small number of people. But this is also mathematically
dubious.

If you do multiple random samples, the chance at least one is way off
increases. If you have a 95% chance of being close to correct on your small
sample, and you do 20 samples, it is quite likely you are wrong on at least 1
of them.

My claim is that (1) there is a very large number of relevant facial features
for the goal of the survey (find the "average" face), and (2) that being wrong
on even a small number of them is significant. My basis for both is a
combination of intuition and that we know humans are extremely good at
perceiving faces and subtle facial differences. There are parts of the brain
that are apparently adapted specifically to facial recognition, and disorders
where facial recognition is impaired but nothing else, for example.

------
irickt
Critique of these images: [http://jezebel.com/5758201/see-the-average-face-of-
women-fro...](http://jezebel.com/5758201/see-the-average-face-of-women-
from-40-different-countries/)

Purported origin of the work:
[http://faceresearch.org/](http://faceresearch.org/)

~~~
mmastrac
There's a good rebuttal to the critique in the comments of that story:

\--- 8< \---

There is no ethnic cleansing. Some site on the net stole these from me, by not
sourcing them to me. I created all of these and more (ones for men) right
here: [pmsol3.wordpress.com]

My account on FaceResearch.org is Rasfarengi. I have e-mailed the editor about
this already. The "South Africa" composite on here is labeled wrong, because
who ever took it from my site did not label it correctly. It is actually the
Argentina composite. The South African composite I did only uses Khoi-San and
South Bantu populations found in South Africa, not whites or colourds.

I am African American, so there is no racism here. I didn't make specific
composites of many African nationalities because it is just too difficult. My
process requires front facing photos with limited smiles. I have to look
through nearly 2,000 photos online to find good pictures of Italians. Let
alone a Fin. In Africa it is just too hard outside of Nigerians and South
Africa, because there are less pictures on the net, because those people don't
have good internet access or access to digital cameras the way East Asians and
Europeans do.

It is even hard to find pictures of Latin Americans of specific nationalities
outside the larger nations.

I did one of "West Africans" specifically to see if I can tell how much Euro
and Native American admixture changed the African American population, whose
ancestors mostly originated from the areas between Senegal and Angola (with a
very very small % from Mozambique) I tried to use the same % that came to
America from specific regions, like the Blight of Biafa, during the slave
trade. I think you can see a difference. I did do a separate South African and
Ethiopian one. Doing specific tribes is too difficult.

~~~
creamyhorror
His website itself is interesting - check out the "Random Averages" post
([http://pmsol3.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/strange-
averages/](http://pmsol3.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/strange-averages/)):

\- the average Golden Age male actor looks similar to his modern-day
counterpart, maybe a bit older going by the receding hairline

\- the Golden Age actress looks somewhat different from the modern - rounder
eyes, somehow? Was that the preferred look for actresses of the era? (they
doesn't look like averages, though...)

\- the average porn actress is blonder than the celeb

Relatedly, it seems quite natural for average faces to be attractive - all the
blemishes and asymmetries and extremes get evened out, leaving a very neutral
look that most people don't have. Extremes are usually not attractive, after
all.

------
Raphmedia
The real origin of these:

[http://pmsol3.wordpress.com/](http://pmsol3.wordpress.com/)

------
Raphmedia
Remember that this is not what the average female will look like in these
countries. It's actually the physical average of the faces of a sampled group.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yes, which can be misleading. In Japan for instance, there are three main body
types and a narrow genetic variation (theorized because Japan may have been
originally inhabited by a small group of shipwrecked sailors).

Averaging these three body types results in a picture of no-one in Japan.

------
yetanotherphd
Funny that China is the only country where they specify the ethnic group, even
though many other countries in that list have sizable ethnic minorities.

~~~
obstacle1
They broke India into two sections as well. I don't know enough about India to
know whether or not that distinction reflects an ethnic divide, though.

~~~
jey
Most people in South India are mostly Dravidian:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidian_peoples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidian_peoples)

------
tokenadult
The comments downthread that point out that this submission appears not to be
from the original source (contrary to HN guidelines) are helpful, as are the
comments describing the original source methodology and critiques of that
methodology. I'm not at all sure that there is reliable data here.

------
phaus
That page needs to add an explanation. I've seen similar images before, but
nearly every commenter on that site seems to think that they selected a bunch
of really hot women to represent what the average woman should look like and
posted the pictures to make people feel bad.

------
drakaal
The software uses a default face, if you go to
[http://faceresearch.org/demos/average](http://faceresearch.org/demos/average)

You can see that even picking to very lopsided in the same way face, like
Right eye higher than left, and mouth off center, results in a face that looks
good when averaged.

The method they are using is clearly flawed.

------
djcapelis
I found it interesting that you can see faint traces of where some of the
sample images from Burmese/Myanmarese women were wearing thanaka. It seems
like in a lot of other countries the sample images are likely to include that
particular culture's makeup styles.

------
lostlogin
Funny not to capitalize country names, and why does India get a double entry?
There are other places where geography correlates with different appearing
faces too.

------
raldu
Where is the average American women?

~~~
paulgb
The images are taken from this collection. Here's the page for American
(continents) Males and Females.

[http://pmsol3.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/world-of-averages-
pop...](http://pmsol3.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/world-of-averages-populations-
of-the-americas/#more-2492)

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piyush_soni
Huh. Average shouldn't be that pretty for most of the countries :).

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zobzu
im going to sweden and south africa.

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batemanesque
West Africa is my favorite country.

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officer_gotcha
Way prettier than my experience.

~~~
namenotrequired
That's one of the results of averaging :)

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virtualwhys
Poland was not high on my list of travel destinations, but, I mean, if the
_average_ woman looks like that ;-)

