Sunday, February 26, 2017

Mars's RED is Venus's CRIMSON

This is wonderful. From Data Pointed. A pictorial rendition of the relative frequency of men and women's names for colors (often, the same color). From their description:
That’s a dot for each of the 2,000 most commonly-used color names as harvested from the 5,000,000-plus-sample results of XKCD’s color survey, sized by relative usage and positioned side-to-side by average hue and vertically by gender preference. Women tend to use color names nearer the top, men towards the bottom, and the dashed line represents the 50-50 split (equal usage by both sexes). Click through to the interactive version, mouse over a few dots, and it should all become clearer.

NEAR THE MIDDLE, the huge ovals of the most common colors – green, blue, purple, etc. – cluster slightly below the centerline: 57% male and 43% female, on average. Both sexes tend to generalize, and men slightly more often than women. Of the top 100 most-oft-used names, lone outlier cyan juts farthest into male territory, preferred by guys over gals more than two to one. Why? Are dudes under the old-school influence of CGA palette #1? Suffering the side effects of one too many encounters with the blue-green printer cartridge? Hypnotized by the macho machinations of that dastardly Cyanide? Your guess is as good as mine.

Across the top, witness the nuanced verbal repertoire of feminine color differentiation. While us men are busy grunting, guzzling beer, and shoving our hands down our pants, women get specific by mixing fruits, animals, spices, flowers, and other such familiarities with finely-honed modifiers like neon and dusty. The result? A vast panoply of warm-fuzzy color names that seemingly trounces anything our Y-chromosomes have to offer.

But don’t fret, dudes. Although the Pottery Barn’s color department wouldn’t appreciate them, we do have some “special” talents. Consider these lovely names from our side:

Some Male Color Names


Aye, in the male visual cortex, bodily fluid and excrement terminology is strong.

Now, let’s freshen up with a few favorites of the ladies:

Some Female Color Names


That’s no typo: women prefer camel!
Here is the static screen grab, but go here for the interactive graphic and see how men view a much less nuanced world of colors.



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