Oh, I forgot to add:
… and when I’m drunk I’m an eleven!
The score you’re given is just an average for all the votes you get. That a 7.4 puts you in the 77th percentile doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that they both start with 7.
If you really cared to, you could make a couple reasonable assumptions (that the mean rating is 5.0, and that scores are normally distributed) and estimate the variance of scores from this information.
From the Hot or Not “Frequently Asked Questions”:
I ran a few calculations, and the variance comes out to be 17.6, which gives us a standard deviation of 4.2. That means that, under the assumptions I made, 68% of all users fall in the interval [.8, 9.2]. It’s possible that that’s true, but I’m thinking that one of my assumptions is not correct.
Math geeks are HAWTTT!!!
:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
Math geeks are HAWTTT!!!
:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
I do agree with you, although it’s not evident in my above post. I was half-joking in pointing out that I need decent looks in order to overcome my lack of personality.
I kindly but vehemently disagree. Even with the variables this statement is a bit too generalized and oversimplified to me. Each woman/man is complex and unique.
Allow me present a few examples I know from real life…
Woman A is a decent looking gal (I’d rate her a 5.5 on a scale 1 to 10) and intentionally seeks and dates men who are uglier than she is so that they will worship her and give her a lot of attention because the men feel she is above their league. This is all true according to A’s closest long-time female friends.
Woman B has had her heart broken a couple times in the past. She is sick of guys lying to her. She tries out the dating scene again and is impressed when she encounters a man who truly is honest and keeps his promises, but she dumps him because, although he believes in a deity, he isn’t fixated on the idea that God is a masculine entity.
Woman C says she wants men to lie to her (yes, told me this herself) as long as the lies are a happy ones. She has cheated on her past boyfriends a lot, but would get upset to here about those boyfriends cheating on her. She cannot resist sleeping with cute guys. She thrives on living in her own ignorant bubble.
Woman D has a plethora of problems in her life. She hates her job; she is at odds with some of her family members; she is in debt; she makes a big deal out of every little inconvenience in her life; and, she’s looking for another guy to date so she can blame all her problems on him.
Woman E thinks emo acoustic guitar players who sing are hot. Any guy who somewhat reminds her of Chris Carrabba or John Mayer must be right for her because any man who can woo her with songs must be a great guy.
Woman F is a hard working and educated woman. She wants a man who will treat her with respect. She dislikes most guys because she thinks all of them want sex and nothing else is important to them.
Woman G only dates guys who athletes or models. She insists that her bfs look good enough to make her friends jealous.
…and the list could go on.
In summary, each woman is unique has her own unique priorities.
For me personally, I do not assume any woman is looking for X (while she’s actually looking for Y); I just try to get to know a girl, sort through the bullshit, and try to see whether or not our personalities mesh. You are correct in that an extra 20 pounds and loss of 6-pack has little consequence if any as far as attracting the opposite sex. It certainly does not hurt to have a 6-pack belly. Moreover, regardless of attractiveness, it’s physically annoying to carry around an extra 20 pounds. I was able to gingerly jog yesterday for the first time in a while; my foot is mostly healed after slicing the bottom of it open on broken glass.
I’m smart enough to realize that I’m still young and stupid and naive and don’t really know what I really want in a relationship, but…what the heck…it’s been fun trying to find out. 
And I truly wish men and women were not so complicated such that it would be easier for your wish to come true in more cases.
<blushes>
I’d like to think I’m around an 8, but I’m clearly more than 2 points below perfection, although I think I’m better than average.
Of course, it all depends.
Some days, I’ll look in the mirror and think- yeah man, lookin’ good. However if I see a picture of myself, I usually recoil a bit and get slightly depressed. It’s the mirror/photo dichotomy. I’m used to looking at myself in the mirror, been doing it all my life. I’ve only seen a handful of pictures of myself that make me happy with what I see though. See, I have one of those faces that’s not really symmetrical- one of my eyes is lower than the other, sort of like Shannen Doherty. In the mirror, I rarely even notice it anymore, but in photos it really jumps out at me.
Still, I look around at the people I see on a regular basis and comfort myself in the possibly misguided belief that I’m at least better looking than them.
I’m pretty happy with my body (at 39), so considering the whole package, I’d say around 6.8.
Check this out:
My initial assumptions were that the hotornot scores were normally distributed with a mean of 5.0. Based on the way that they’re calculated, there’s probably some central limit theorem out there that implies that they are normally distributed, so the bad assumption is that the mean is 5.0. Does that mean that hotornot users are generous, or that unattractive people are less likely to post their photos? I’m thinking the latter.