
How people judge your intelligence and social skills based on your looks: Take 2 - bvi
http://judg.me/blog/first-impressions-count/
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rmATinnovafy
From personal experience:

I've lost a bit more than a hundred (yes, 100) pounds during the last year. My
social skills have improved due to an increase in my confidence.

But here is the interesting part.

People do treat me much better. I get more respect. More smiles. They think I
am more intelligent, and show this by listening to what I have to say.

And even though I am an introvert, and somewhat shy, people tell me how
"social" I am.

I have not changed the way I dress (jeans, t-shirt, sneakers). Though when I'm
wearing exercise clothing (running shorts, a sleeveless shirt, running shoes),
people are more likely to approach me.

So, this person does have a good point. We are indeed judged by our
appearances. In fact, our social standing is calculated on the fly by others
on how we look.

 _Edited to fix spelling disaster._

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metabrew
Those graphs are absolutely vile.

I kept wondering how anyone who chooses hard-to-read shonky 3d bar charts like
that could possibly perform a decent statistical analysis.

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wr1472
Agreed, not the prettiest graphics, but you shouldn't dismiss the data &
findings because of it.

Unless of course you judge the validity of a study based on the appearance of
its graphs?

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dnda
To me, authors decision to use terrible 3D graphs and non zero Y axis makes
makes me suspicious of his other decisions and comments.

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john_horton
Agree that 3D graphs are terrible, but it's a canard that y-axes always need
to start at 0 and that doing anything else is somehow misleading.

On this point, see <http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/axes-of-evil/>

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aaronjg
Y-axis need to start at zero when the data being presented is a bar graph and
the bar is filled in. If it is a scatter plot with points being plotted, then
it's generally not misleading to shift the axis.

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john_horton
I don't disagree with that - a bar chart that doesn't start at zero can be
misleading. But for what he was trying to do---compare means---it would have
been a perfectly fine choice to do a lineplot/ _very_ thin bar plot and start
the y-axes somewhere other than zero if he included error bars and clearly
labeled things.

[http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=00003q)

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leoedin
Last time something from judg.me was posted, there was a lot of criticism
about your statistical methods of analysis. You've clearly put a lot of effort
into attempting to do a better analysis of the data, and this time there's
certainly an improvement in terms of actual analytical methods used.

However, the graphs (as others have said) are terrible. Simply having a graph
type available to you doesn't mean you have to use it! For the sake of your
readers, please, please, only use one type of graph. Stick with a plain bar
chart. Nobody minds that it's not as fancy looking as a pseudo-3D bar chart or
one with pointed cones. People want to see the data, not the fancy chart.

An additional point to this is labelling your axes. Please do it! If I can't
see clearly what an axis represents, I'm inclined to ignore your data.
Regardless of how interesting your data is, I'm going to stop reading if it's
presented terribly.

These are the sorts of things that get hammered into you in scientific
subjects at school/college. You don't need to do that type of class to know
them though. There's plenty of information online about this stuff.[1] Worth
noting is section 2.6, "Do not misuse the tools". Bad graphs are to statistics
what the <blink> tag is to HTML.

[1, The UNs guide to presenting statistics]:
[http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/stats/documents/writing/M...](http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/stats/documents/writing/MDM_Part2_English.pdf)

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bvi
Agreed - and I've updated the graphs. Thanks for the comments!

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drostie
Please consider showing more of the variation and including more information
about it in your results.

You conclude, for example, that "In general, it can be concluded that people
can and do make snap judgments about personality and abilities based on
superficial physical characteristics."

However, a cursory stroll through ranking people on your site reveals that
actually, peoples' "snap judgments" show very high subjective variability, and
you see these graphs which just have data points all over the place, looking
more like a uniform distribution than a clear "everyone things you look smart
and extroverted."

Given this, can you profile a burst of ratings? Can you say that there are a
coherent group who rated Alice as smart extrovert and Bob as smart introvert
and Carol as dumb extrovert -- and can you profile their preferences? Or do
most people just browse through your site clicking randomly on the axes
without any real reflection on the people they're rating?

We could see this if we could see error bars, but aside from your very first
image where you try to show that there is a negative correlation between
smartness and sociability, info on variability seems quite nonexistent. (And
even there, it is clear that the variability dwarfs the trendline.) Also, you
might want to see if there are systematic biases -- what happens if you flip
the introvert/extrovert axis for some IP addresses?

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msellout
Agreed. All plots should be scatter plots with line-of-best-fit drawn over it.

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MattArnold
You claim to have proven that people make snap judgments based on superficial
physical appearance. But it's based on a test in which you explicitly demanded
that the test subjects do so. Failure to do so meant non-participation in your
test. How can you claim to have tested the hypothesis?

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rickyconnolly
Those graphs are truely horrible, especially the 3D cone/tower chart for the
race vs. intelligence data

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shutton
When showing similar types of data try to use the same type of graph. Once the
reader has learnt to interpret results from one graph they can easily apply it
to the next. It looks like you've cycle through every graph type Excel has to
offer.

Other than that, quite interesting!

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Mordor
Used to have a terrible posture until it gave me back problems. Spent a week
correcting it only to be shocked at the difference it made to my
attractiveness to women - wish I'd known earlier '-(

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sk5t
Standing tall, head and shoulders back, making eye contact - almost everyone
will treat you differently than when slouched or submissive-looking.

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rockmeamedee
The research is a good idea, an investigation of the halo effect. The
population of graders wasn't mentioned, that can have a huge effect on the
result. Also, was 1000 people enough to analyze 12 variables?

However, I have to say, the graphs are ugly. Eg, spikes aren't good, you could
have gone with with a bar chart. Also, 3d graphs are unneeded, and in general
are very hard to do right. They can't convey much information. With just 2x2
variables, there are 4 datapoints. That would be fine on a 2d picture.

Otherwise keep on with the research...

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Paul_S
Great idea but the size and scope is too small to be meaningful.

Also, asking people a direct question will often get you a dishonest answer.
Maybe there's a way to ask the same question in an indirect way?

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empthought
Please read Tufte's advice on graphs. 3D graphs are especially irritating.

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frankiewarren
How people judge your intelligence based on the looks of your graphs: Take 1.

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bvi
Haha, fair point. I've updated the graphs!

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doubleconfess
Wow, this made an even bigger difference than I would have expected. Nicely
done!

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schme
"Click here" in the beginning has no link.

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jcmhn
I'm astonished at the finding showing baldness having no significance for men.

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doubleconfess
This would be an awesome resume piece to get a job at OKCupid.

