Monday, September 13, 2010

Brain & religion

In response to these statistics about OK Cupid users, I decided to analyse my OK Cupid profile for reading grade level.

I am pleased to announce that my score was 10th grade (higher than all the atheists on OK Cupid, serious or otherwise). I suspect that, as Pharyngula warns, some other factor may be affecting these statistics, but anyway, I feel vindicated.

Here are the results:
Number of characters (without spaces) : 4,253.00
Number of words : 873.00
Number of sentences : 52.00
Average number of characters per word : 4.87
Average number of syllables per word : 1.64
Average number of words per sentence: 16.79

Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading

Gunning Fog index : 12.08

Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text :

Coleman Liau index : 11.11
Flesh Kincaid Grade level : 10.27
ARI (Automated Readability Index) : 9.91
SMOG : 11.73
Flesch Reading Ease : 51.31

7 comments:

Gerrarrdus said...

Interesting one. Like most internet stats it could probably do with a lot more analysis.
It seems likely to me that more intelligent people are more likely to go against the flow, so be more atheist in the states, be a vegetarian, be a pacifist. If those figures are overwhelmingly American then they could be simply reflecting this.
In this country, in my experience church congregations are generally of higher educational achievement than the communities in which they are set, so maybe this is reflective of the same thing.

Or maybe all the intelligent Christians are out having a life instead of blogging?

Yewtree said...

OK Cupid is a dating site, not a blogging site. But maybe all the intelligent Christians have already managed to meet someone at church? Not sure why that would be; but at least church or its equivalent gives a ready-made social circle in which to meet like-minded others, so the only ones left are the wallflowers.

Gerrarrdus said...

Hadn't realised that's what it was. Which maybe shows how dim I am. That skews the data even more.

Being a Christian means you're likely to have some kind of social life, so I guess you are more likely connected. Maybe only dim Christians need a dating site?

Yewtree said...

That said, the reading grade level is actually supposed to be a measure of ease of reading, so maybe it just means that atheists write longer sentences and are less easy to understand...

Gerrarrdus said...

I was taught that writing short sentences is a good practice. Means people understand you.

Yewtree said...

Quite :)

Steve Hayes said...

I would say that it indicates stuff Americans like. Many of the top things that people liked, regardless of race, were things I'd never even heard of, or if I had heard of them wasn't sure what they were. Like the Red Sox, so popular among white women. I'm pretty sure it's a team that plays one of those American sports, like baseball, basketball, or American football, but which one it is, I couldn't say.