Graph Reading Lesson

The Graph

This graph was posted, and although it was interesting, it seems to be misread by most. Most people read this as most common occurrences in profiles, when it is actually the highest ratios. The purpose of this graph is to show what words guy or girls use more than the other gender, not which words they use most. The graphs tell us nothing about actually numbers except for the given minimums.

Link to post: http://imgur.com/gallery/eGhWL

Top Comments

These comments show what I mean. I'm not trying to pick on anyone specifically, but I'm going to examine the second claim further.

Small Print

The small print of the graph is here. Making the assumption that for the "100 total word occurrences" it only counted each profile's use of the word once we can do the following calculations. If a women/men ratio of 5.5 used the word "transgender" and that total had to be at least 100, then you get roughly 15 men, which doesn't met the 25 min for each sex. So we set the men to 25 which makes the minimum number of profiles it could be is 138, which is only about 3.5% of the 39,000 profiles survey.

This is only the minimum. Just like I stated before, these graphs show nothing about the numbers of occurrences besides the minimums, it's simply here to show what words men use more than women and vise versa.

Also, if "long walks on the beach" were on both sides equally then the ratio would be at 1 and too low to make it on the graph. This graph doesn't prove most guys on there are software engineering fathers, just that more men use those words then women.

tl/dr: the graphs show ratio not # of occurrences

Thanks @BoJackNorseman for pointing out an error I had, also I love your username.