foreheadtittaes:

Last night I set out to answer a question that had been plaguing my mind for minutes: are there more stock photos of women laughing alone with salads than men laughing alone with salads? I did a statistical analysis on the number of hits that pop up if I search for ‘salad man’ and ‘salad woman’ (or ‘salad [gender] single’ to filter out photos of groups of people) on various image agencies. I didn’t get a statistically significant result the first time I did it even though there were clearly more photos of women with salads than men with salads. Presumably that was because I only compared four image agencies. Hey, it was 5 AM.

I increased the statistical power of my analysis by adding more image agencies to my data. These are preliminary results but uh, yes, there appears to be more photos of women laughing alone with salads than men laughing alone with salads. And it’s statistically significant. Are female stock photo models just more willing to pose with and consume fresh leafy vegetables? Is there a higher demand for photos of women laughing alone with salad? Or perhaps happy solitary salad eating is more readily associated with women? I DON’T KNOW.

I also did it for pizza but as you can see from the raw data, there doesn’t seem to be any gender-specific trend for pizza.

YES, I WILL GLADLY PUT MY TINHAT ON.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a statistician. Please don’t hesitate to correct me if you see anything amiss.

i love random math adventures.

(via arianamonster)