giles said:
The Almighty Aardvark said:
Now I just have to decide whether this is better than or worse than these
two graphs I stumbled upon today.
What are the numbers or methodology behind this? Doesn't look convincing at all.
It's not a well done study, for one it's only including unmarried men and women looking for relationships. Namely those residing on OK Cupid, all of the data is derived from the site. The details of that particular graph is in a book called Dataclysm so I can't get all of the details from that particular study.
What I have put together from quotes and articles is that this is not a reflection of who men or women would actually try to date, just of what age of person they find they rate as the most attractive.
This page is a lot more transparent than those two graphs.
Given that the study is isolated OK Cupid, there definitely is a bit of bias. For one, there might be a good reason why these 50 year old men who find 20 year olds the most attractive are still single. At the same time, there's still a very substantial difference between men and women within the dating community.
I don't need much of a stretch to believe this though, I've seen ordinary men as old as 40 talking to each other about how hot girls as young as 16 are. I've also seen various statistics for marriage stating that men are more likely to marry women 10 years younger than them than they are to marry a woman 3 years older.
