Friday, April 11, 2008

If Science says it, then it must be so...

I often say that I am freakishly tall. And I am...here's the proof:



This is a chart showing the average height of white, American women by age. The red lines indicate different percentiles. So if you're height/age point is between the line marked 75 and the line marked 90, then you are taller than 75-90% of the white women in the US.

I am 5'11" tall (71 inches), which puts me significantly above the top red line for all age groups (I'm in my late 20s). Now, obviously, since the distribution of height is bell-shaped, the percentile lines would stretch out considerably near the top, but there is a case to be made that I'm in the top few percent of white American women, height-wise.

But Ross is also tall. In fact, while most people don't think of me as tall (until they realize that I am taller than all of the women in the room), everybody thinks of Ross as tall. Which raises the question: Who is the bigger freak, height-wise? I think that this chart answers that question definitively:



At 6'5" (77 inches) tall, Ross is even further above the 90% line than I am. By my incredibly scientific measurement, Ross is 3 black lines above the red line, whereas I am only 2-1/2 above it. So science says that Ross is a bigger freak. And if science says it, who am I to say differently?

******

If you're interested, I got these charts from this site The data is admittedly a little old (it is based off of the NHANES, which was collected between 1988 and 1994) but it gives you an idea.

2 comments:

paisana said...

Well, I am also freakishly tall, but I'm made even more so by my reluctance to wear anything but 3" heels.

Also, I think you mean to count in centimeters and not inches.

171"/12=14.25'
171cm/2.5/12=5.7'

Who's the science geek here?

kate said...

Oops! Actually, I meant 71" tall, rather than 171 (71/12=5'11"). I fixed it in both places. But you should know that I'm much taller than 5'7"!

Thanks for the catch!