Poll: Compare Amongst Yourselves

[thefourthvine]

makesmewannadie is visiting me, and we got to talking, as we often do. (Okay. Full disclosure: the actual challenge would be making us shut the fuck up.) And one thing we talked about reminded me of a poll I'd considered posting lo these many moons ago, to test a hypothesis that I can't very well tell you beforehand. (Bias is death to informal and statistically skewed LJ polls, my friends.)

So, first, let me just say: hey, it'd be cool if you'd take this poll. I would love you and stuff.

Second - when I say "your friends list," I mean the portion of your friends list that you read regularly - your default reading filter, if you have one, or the whole list if that's how you read. (If you don't read your friends list at all, this poll is not going to be a good fit for you.) My point is, I want you to consider the people you know the best. (Which is not to say you necessarily know them well, of course.) And when I say "the average," I mean your own personally assessed average of this trait over your friends list.

And, seriously, there are no bad answers here. I'm only wondering where you fit into your own mental picture of your friends list for these particular variables. I know you may not have great data for all these questions; just give me your first reaction, and I will of course love you forever.

ETA: Please don't go back to change your answers after you've finished the poll and seen the results! (Unless you think of something you want to add to the text box, or you've decided shoes are more important than almost-cock. Those questions are weighty and take long consideration; I understand that.)



[Poll #931955]

Comments

[cardalia.livejournal.com]

Huh, very interesting, I'll have to come back and see what people think later! I've got my own predictions about the results too, so it'll be interesting to see if they come true. So far a lot of people (including me) are already feeling less creative than anyone else. ;)

[odditycollector.livejournal.com]

Re. the last question, have you ever read The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:HV6E89InALwJ:www.dvara.net/HK/IHope.rtf)?

[ldthomps.livejournal.com]

I haven't looked at other people's answers yet, but my general understanding is that Most folks feel like they're poorer, harder working, more ethical, etc., than Most Everybody Else. On the other hand, friends lists are made of people whom, most probably, we view as Like ourselves, so. Hunh! Interesting! I shall await answers, and the unveiling of your hypothesis and how this all informs it!

[apatheia-jane.livejournal.com]

So, the majority of people feel they are less sexually active & less creative than their flist.

Although, if most fans are lurkers, but most of their flist is made up of BNFs, the "less creative" might actually be statistically possible.

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

Heeh, this was fun! I do that thing where I only tend to compare myself to people I perceive to be better than me in that area, so it was kind of calming to compare myself with a whole bunch of disparate people I know and like, rather than just the half dozen who produce epic, hand-illustrated stories in seven languages while studying to be doctors and volunteering in orphanages.

(As a mathematician I know puts it, he is, of course, the worst mathematician in the world -- those other people who are worse than him at maths? Terribly nice people, of course, but not what you'd call mathematicians, exactly.)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I have Many Theories that I (of course) don't want to discuss. Yet. But, yeah, I'm bouncing eagerly awaiting these results, and hoping maybe someone will pimp this poll somewhere. (And if you want to comment about your theories, either screened or not, I'd love to hear about them. That would be deeply fascinating, to see what other people are expecting to come of this exercise.)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I have now. And yay for the shoe! (Normally I'm not a big fan of Dick - wait, that came out wrong. I tend not to enjoy Philip K. Dick's writing, so I haven't read a whole bunch of his stories. But that, I enjoyed. Thank you!)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

That's the interesting part of it - sure, Every Person might think he's poorer, smarter, more ethical, etc. than Everybody Else, but our friends list - we actually know something about them, about their lives. And we select them for ourselves. So I'm predicting the results will be - well, different.

*unreasonably fascinated*

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I do think it's interesting that nearly everyone so far thinks other people are having more sex. And the lurker factor is another interesting point, but then, if you're answering a poll, are you really a lurker? (If a lurker clicks on a radio button, but no one hears him, is he still a lurker?)

[ratcreature]

I'm kind of confused: where is the first part if this is part two?

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

(Have I mentioned to you lately that I love that icon? Because I do. <3!)

I do that thing where I only tend to compare myself to people I perceive to be better than me in that area, so it was kind of calming to compare myself with a whole bunch of disparate people I know and like, rather than just the half dozen who produce epic, hand-illustrated stories in seven languages while studying to be doctors and volunteering in orphanages.

I agree. Although I was kind of surprised at some of my own responses. (And, you know, I made the poll - you'd think I'd at least know what to expect from my own answers. But I didn't, not in every case.)

As a mathematician I know puts it, he is, of course, the worst mathematician in the world -- those other people who are worse than him at maths? Terribly nice people, of course, but not what you'd call mathematicians, exactly.

This is a standard feature of mathematicians everywhere. They will also all tell you that they are, at best, mediocre at math. (Because, of course, they know precisely how much they don't know.) And very often the best ones will insist they aren't actually mathematicians at all.

I love numbers, but I love mathematicians more.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Here (http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/63953.html). This is part two in a long-planned, long-delayed series of polls. The first was sanity by consensus. This is - well, it was supposed to be normalcy by consensus, but it mutated. Possibly I should change the subject of it entirely.

*ponders*

[ratcreature]

Well, for example I checked that I have "less sex" because there's a definite dearth of *any* kind of sex in my life, and I figure that "no sex" is always bound to be less than the "average" even if a number of other people also may not have sex, even if the *majority* also had no sex (unlikely, but I guess everybody who never mentions their sex life or lack thereof could be like me and not have one atm), because I know that at least some of f-list is in steady relationships and those are bound to have some sex, so the "average" would still be "some sex" even if the standard deviation might be so high as to render that "average" not that useful, because in that hypothetical case most would have no sex with some having regular sex, and nobody would have the "a little sex" that would be the average. Does that make sense?

[ratcreature]

Ah. It's just since there was no link to that (and that was months ago, so I had forgotten about it) I assumed the first part must have been recent and I missed it.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Yup. You're thinking in terms of numerical average. Like, if Friend A is having no sex, Friend B is having no sex, Friend C is having sex four times a week, and Friend D is having no sex, then the mean is once a week, and A, B, and D are below average.

But the other way of looking at that same data, of course, is the median and the mode are both 0, so in actuality, A, B, and D are average and C is above average. (Probably I weighted towards the first view by using the word "average" in the poll.)

Either way, an interesting data point. (And, of course, it could just be one of those things: everyone assumes everyone else is having more sex. Which is really easy to assume if you're having no sex, but even if you're just having less sex than usual, or less than you think you "should" have, stuff like that, it would still be easy to assume you're below average.)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

(Those are adorable lurkers supporting you in email, by the way. They are just about the cutest lurkers ever, in fact. *pats lurkers*)

I actually changed the title of the post, at any rate, because this isn't quite the poll I had planned as part of the consensus series, and in any case, you're right - it's very confusing, coming so long after the first part. I think this one is better. I hope, anyway.

[odditycollector.livejournal.com]

Me neither, to be honest. But I always crack up at "There's a shoe in it," he said.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Hmm, this could measure fen's perceptions of themselves as below or above "average"--or it could measure whether fen on your flist are below or above the average of feb on their flist.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating - after filling out the poll, I went back and thought about what my answers would be if I happened to compare myself to offline friends or my local community. My answers would be totally different. Except for the Queen Anne Chair.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, when I think "average" I don't think of a median in mymind. I mean, I've mostly done statistics in physics and in the usual cases you want a meaningful average with a standard deviation (and possibly even try to justify kicking out data points that are too extremely skewed to make sense as some kind of error or abberation if they'd mess up your standard deviation too badly *g*) and not the kind of skewed data sets for which I understand median is used.

[ratcreature]

(Those are adorable lurkers supporting you in email, by the way. They are just about the cutest lurkers ever, in fact. *pats lurkers*)


Heh, yeah, it's too bad they're kind of shy...

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

Generally, I think I read my flist for empathy--to see I'm not alone. So I tend to feel about average in most respects. I suspect that this is somewhat gendered.

[gloss]

makesmewannadie is visiting me, and we got to talking, as we often do
OTP, yay!

I'm really intrigued by these results.

[wychwood]

This is hilarious :) 67% of respondents think they're less sexually-active than the average of their flist? What does that say about how much we talk about stuff? *g*

(PS I totally have to confess that I think I'm smarter than most people, but my flist is fiendishly intelligent, so I'm "as smart" or "less smart" than it)

I look forward to seeing your analysis of all this! :)

[wychwood]

PPS On richness: I said "average", but - well, ok, I'm totally broke and I have no income at all, so I'm poor, but I'm living at home funded by my parents, so I'm not worrying about money so much, which makes me relatively well-off. So that's very much an "it depends" question.