mellowtigger (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mellowtigger) wrote2010-09-15 12:21 am
mellowtigger) wrote2010-09-15 12:21 am
religion and literacy
The internet connects society, and it permits the collection of huge amounts of data about people. You can be sure that companies are mining that data. I know only three cases where the results are shared back directly with the population base that contributes the raw data.
Today's example comes from a social dating website called OKcupid.com. People there post detailed descriptions of themselves. People also answer multiple-choice questions generated by other users of the site. Those questions make for a very interesting mix of ideas and potential interactions.
They occasionally mine their half-a-million profiles for nuggets of interesting knowledge. The news last week was specifically about findings of racial differences. Click on the gender image at the top of each racial profile to switch between male and female results. Being an infovore, I enjoyed reading through the revelations about various trends in the data.
Buried towards the end of the long entry, however, are some nuggets about literacy that are separated by religious identity. They used a formula called the Coleman-Liau Index to rate the "readability" (grade level) of the text that people write into their profiles. This formula ignores word meaning and instead focuses specifically on structure complexity (characters per word, words per sentence).
Here are the literacy charts by race, religion, and religious fervor. The results practically write their own punch lines.
As they summarize at the end of the blog:
Kudos to the Buddhists and the Jews for keeping pace (almost) with the freethinkers. That almost all of these groups operate at an average Junior High (7th and 8th grade) reading level is a testament to the efficacy of the American education system.
Today's example comes from a social dating website called OKcupid.com. People there post detailed descriptions of themselves. People also answer multiple-choice questions generated by other users of the site. Those questions make for a very interesting mix of ideas and potential interactions.
They occasionally mine their half-a-million profiles for nuggets of interesting knowledge. The news last week was specifically about findings of racial differences. Click on the gender image at the top of each racial profile to switch between male and female results. Being an infovore, I enjoyed reading through the revelations about various trends in the data.
Buried towards the end of the long entry, however, are some nuggets about literacy that are separated by religious identity. They used a formula called the Coleman-Liau Index to rate the "readability" (grade level) of the text that people write into their profiles. This formula ignores word meaning and instead focuses specifically on structure complexity (characters per word, words per sentence).
Here are the literacy charts by race, religion, and religious fervor. The results practically write their own punch lines.
As they summarize at the end of the blog:
"Note that for each of the faith-based belief systems I've listed, the people who are the least serious about them write at the highest level. On the other hand, the people who are most serious about not having faith (i.e. the "very serious" agnostics and atheists) score higher than any religious groups."
- http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-real-stuff-white-people-like/
- http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-real-stuff-white-people-like/
Kudos to the Buddhists and the Jews for keeping pace (almost) with the freethinkers. That almost all of these groups operate at an average Junior High (7th and 8th grade) reading level is a testament to the efficacy of the American education system.
:o)
Re: :o)
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I wonder if the Buddhists here at Asian people or Westerners who have adopted Buddhism. If it the latter, then demographically, Americans who become Buddhist tend to be well-educated, white, middle class (the same demographic applies to Neopagans). The high placement of Jews also doesn't suprise me given that historically Jews have placed a higher emphasis on education and literacy than the Christians and Muslims that they lived among. As I remeber, too, Jews, tend to make up a dispropotionately large percentage of Americans who become Buddhists (insert Jewbu jokes here :).
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