what statistical things do people perpetually lie about?

In My Humble Opinion
41

[QUOTE=featherlou]
I think people lie about shaving their genitals. From everything I’ve read here, every single person has shaved chicken parts all the time. I’ve mentioned my skepticism of this in the past, and there was an outcry from all the shavers, but I still don’t buy it. Maybe everyone under 25 shaves every day, but I don’t believe every Doper is bald as a grape. And then I realize that I’m thinking about other people’s genitals a wee bit too much. :smiley:
[/QUOTE]

Chicken parts, hee.

Don’t you know? With our huge breasts and/or dicks, we’re all porn stars, so we have to shave. :smiley:

42

Credit reports. Before I run one, I ask the customer “How’s your credit?” Whatever they say, I put it down at least one notch and often two.

I’ve seen “pretty good” credit reports with bankruptcies, collect accounts and judgements on them.

43

[QUOTE=preindication]
In real life, everone who wants me to join them on a trip to a casino says they won money last time.
And on-line, everyone who plays on-line poker or does on-line stock trades is making so much they will quit their day job any month now. (Right!)
[/QUOTE]

How do you get a professional poker player (day trader) off of your porch? Pay him for the pizza.

What is the difference between a day trader (professional poker player) and an extra large pizza? An extra large pizza can feed a family of four.

44

[QUOTE=RickJay]
If you want to see mendacity about statistics on an absolutely galactic scale, just start a thread called “Hey, what’s your IQ?” The ridiculously inflated numbers will defy any sort of reason, probability, or belief.

We had one a few years back - I searched for it but couldn’t find it - that got to a level of dishonest one-upmanship that would have been funny if it weren’t so sad. 140, 150, 160, 170, 180… if the claims were true then essentially all the smartest people in the world with Internet connections were in that thread.

I don’t think people actually realize how rare IQs of 160 and 170 are.
[/QUOTE]

As a friend of mine used to say on the golf course when we would be telling stories “the first liar doesn’t have a chance here.”

I also remember reading somewhere that approximately 70% of all Americans believe that they have an above average IQ.

45

Depends on what you consider a lie.

I’m an engineer. Which means I work with other engineers. And there is something I have noticed about engineers:

When you ask an engineer a technical question, and they don’t know they answer, rarely will they say, “I don’t know.” 99% of the time they will make up an answer. The answer will be full of technical jargon/BS. They do this, obviously, out of ego; they don’t want to look dumb.

46

Regarding IQ tests… I never took one as a kid. Parents thought they were culturally insensitive etcetera. Bloody hippies. Anyway, I took a couple on line a year or two ago. I mean, obviously BS but what the hell. I got maybe 120 on one that had a strong math/spatial ability component, then dug around and found a mostly verbal one that I aced with 145.

Maybe some of the people stating they have ridiculously high IQs are more wilfully fooling themselves about the reliability of an internet quiz rather than outright consciously lying. It’d be lovely to think I have an IQ of 145, but aside from real IQ tests merely proving people good at tests, I know I’m not actually good at a lot of what’s on a standard IQ test. Thus the difference between the two online tests.

When asked I say I’ve never been tested and try to leave out the defensive sounding stuff about cultural bias etc.

47

[QUOTE=Arien]
Is it this thread: What’s your IQ?
[/QUOTE]

That’s the one. Blatant, ridiculous lies.

48

[QUOTE=RickJay]
That’s the one. Blatant, ridiculous lies.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, that’s a great thread. Nobody lying there at all, not at all. Every single Doper is an Einstein-level genius or above. (Would it be too mean of me to say that that explains the social skills? :smiley: )

Those IQ tests are crap, anyway. My husband and I both took an online one and got something like 160 each - we’re bright people, but we’re not that smart. Not even close. High normal is more like it.

49

[QUOTE=dennis gallagher]

I also remember reading somewhere that approximately 70% of all Americans believe that they have an above average IQ.
[/QUOTE]

Which is not impossible, given that average usually means “mean”, not “median,” and the lower end of the curve is unlikely to be sampled, and many sources still list “100” as the average IQ, even though better education has brought it up to about 110 over the last few decades (a common criticism of IQ tests in general – they shouldn’t be measuring education).

I hear the same stat (or one close to it) with regard to driving ability, too. It’s harder to objectively measure–for most folks, accident rates/tickets aren’t common enough to weed out the large number caused by chance or external events; driving tests might be a good indicator, but are generally only taken a few times per lifetime, generally at the very beginning of driving experience. But at the same time, I’ve known a few drivers who HAVE to be several standard deviations out the “bad” end of that curve. Fundamentally, the question you need to ask on these is: how likely is it that the distribution of (whatever skill) is a neat bell curve, and not a skewed or bi-modal one. It’s often hard to know.

As others have pointed out: many of these questions are self-selected, and who’s going to post that they’re on the lower end of some desirable trait?

And to the OP: weight, easy. To some extent, I often just don’t know on a day-to-day basis, but if asked by someone I need to answer (insurance form, doctor, etc.) I will estimate at the low end of “possible” unless I actively force myself not to (because I don’t think it’s a good idea to lie to doctors, it’s just instinctive).

50

Pre-teen and teen sex surveys ping my big BS-o-meter every time. Because I remember getting those surveys in school and I, along with a group of about five friends (all of us huge virgins), talked about multiple sex partners, blow jobs, lack of birth control and a few abortions.

I was the responible one who “admitted” to only having had two partners and always using a condom.

51

[QUOTE=featherlou]
Oh, that’s a great thread. Nobody lying there at all, not at all. Every single Doper is an Einstein-level genius or above. (Would it be too mean of me to say that that explains the social skills? :smiley: )

Those IQ tests are crap, anyway. My husband and I both took an online one and got something like 160 each - we’re bright people, but we’re not that smart. Not even close. High normal is more like it.
[/QUOTE]

Your two paragraphs contradict each other. If online tests are so silly that people who don’t claim to be geniuses can get scores of 160, then it’s easy enough for many dopers to have convinced themselves they really are that smart.

As Thudlow Boink pointed out, anyone who cares what their IQ is is going to take lots of tests and remember only the highest score.

And, honestly, it’s entirely plausible that there are more than a handful of dopers with IQs > 160.

52

On the radio show “Loveline”, whenever they ask a caller’s height and/or weight, they do “radio math” to arrive at what their probable actual height and weight are. They knock a couple of inches off the height and add a dozen or so pounds of weight, depending on how the caller responds to other questioning.

53

I’m lying … NOW!

But seriously, folks. If someone I don’t know calls me on the telephone and asks any question whatsoever, I lie. Who are they anyway? Who’s to say they’re not my insurance company looking for a reason to drop me?

I lie about my penis length, because it might cause the people to die laughing. I lie about how much I pay for stuff because I’m embarrassed that I don’t know how to bargain. I lie about how unhealthy my diet is, because I should know better. And so forth and so on… Basically, I get tired of judgmental people, so if I don’t think they deserve the truth, I lie. So sue me.

Another thing: Crafter_Man had a good observation about engineers, but I’ve also noticed that long-time engineers will answer technical questions with many caveats, so as not to say something that’s not true. (E.g., “Yes, my software will work, but only if the largest sample is less than the cube root of max_float, and will definitely not work if negative time values are input, and it probably won’t work if you send in non-normalized unit vectors.”) I tell you, it sometimes worse than if they were lying.

54

[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]
Your two paragraphs contradict each other. If online tests are so silly that people who don’t claim to be geniuses can get scores of 160, then it’s easy enough for many dopers to have convinced themselves they really are that smart.<snip>
[/QUOTE]

See, I’m so dumb that I didn’t even see that. :smiley:

55

[QUOTE=featherlou]
See, I’m so dumb that I didn’t even see that. :smiley:
[/QUOTE]

In that case, your IQ clearly isn’t a hair about 150, 155 tops. And I’m starting to have doubts about the length of your penis, as well.

56

{Looks in pants}
Me too.

:smiley:

57

It’s clear to all my friends that I habitually lie; I just bring them down.
I’ve probably heard at least 3 different stories from various people about how they’ve driven 60, 80, or even 110 through a residential area before (where the speed limit’s 25). Although I’ve never seen it in real life. Hmm… :dubious:

58

[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]

And, honestly, it’s entirely plausible that there are more than a handful of dopers with IQs > 160.
[/QUOTE]

Plausible, perhaps, but I don’t think there can be as many as have been claimed. An IQ of 160 is enjoyed by only about 1 in 10,000 people; the SDMB probably does not have 10,000 regular participating members (more than that have signed up but I’d guess the vast majority are inactive.)

Even if we assume SDMB members trend above 100, and even granting that self-reporting will tend to draw out the people with high scores, the number of really huge IQs presented in the “What’s your IQ” thread defy rational belief. Here are a list of actual claims and the approximate frequency with which such IQs occur in the population on the Stanford-Binet scale (I am taking the lowest number cited if someone cited more than one, and disregarding reports of childhood tests.)

Nichol_storm, 147 (1 in 600)
lieu, 147 (1 in 600)
Cyrin, 151 (1 in 1400)
Lute Skywatcher, 190 (1 in 100,000,000)
CRorex, 188 (1 in 52,000,000)
ultrafilter, 157 (1 in 5,400)
Angel of the Lord, 160 (1 in 11,000)
tracer, 148 (1 in 741)
Meros, 165 (1 in 40,000)
LifeOnWry, 157 (1 in 5,400)
Coldfire, 135 (1 in 70)
Chimera, 162 (1 in 19,000)

I don’t believe it. Not all of it. It just cannot be.

I threw in Coldfire’s score just for the sake of comparison, because the numbers are so staggering you can get accustomed to them, so I wanted to illustrate the unlikelihood of this by using Coldfire, who does seem very bright to me.

An IQ of 135 is REALLY high. On either the Wechsler or Stanford-Binet test it’s easily sufficient for Mensa qualification (1 in 50 is their standard, essentially.) A person with an IQ legitimately that high had a better than even chance of being the smartest kid in any regular classroom they were ever in. If they went to a big high school, say with 2000 kids, there were probably not three dozen smarter kids in the entire joint. A person with an IQ of 135 is really, really gifted. In any random group of people, like their softball team or their division at work, assuming they don’t work at NASA, or the lineup at Sears, they’ll usually be the smartest person around.

Now, look at the oither scores. Lute Skywatcher is one of the sixty smartest human beings on this planet and CRorex is one of the top 120. You will, in all likelihood, go your entire life and never meet a person that smart. The folks in the 160s are very, very rare - most big high schools won’t have anyone that smart. Some TOWNS don’t have anyone that smart. I’m not saying these people are lying, but I think another poster hit the nail on the head; people are remembering the highest number ever associated with IQ, especially off less than honest tests.

I have never had a formally proctored IQ test as an adult. Now, I honestly think I’m a pretty smart guy. Everyone I know thinks I’m a smart guy. It’s one of the first things anyone will say about me if you ask them; “smart” or “intelligent”
will, I guarantee, be one of their first adjectives if you say “Tell me about Rick, what’s he like?” They’ll say “He’s really smart, funny too, good Dad, but he kind of smells like a old hockey bag.” But an IQ of 190? 160? Even 140? No fuckin’ way.

I have to ask myself honestly: Was I the smartest kid in most of my high school classes. I was pretty darned smart - but can I say for sure I was smarter than Jim Watters? Hmm. No, probably not. Heidi? Maybe… but I can’t say for sure. Jen Payne? No way, not with her skill in English, I can’t say that for sure. Steve McSherry? No. Leila? Probably not, maybe, but I can’t say for sure. Now, they weren’t all in the same class at any given time but you see my point.

I’d bet that I - an honor student, winner of a scholarship and offered money by schools I didn’t stoop to going to, graduate of an extremely well regarded university - was usually one of the 2 or 3 smartest kids in any senior high school class, which gives me an IQ in the general vicinity of 115 to 125. And I’m self reporting, so take that with a grain of salt, because I’m uncomfortable claiming it THAT high. I’m leaning to 115. Unimpressive? I’m still claiming to be a full standard deviation above the norm, so you should still be skeptical.

And people in that other thread were calling 115 STUPID.

59

There was a segment of The Man Show where Adam Corolla had a platform set up and invited women over to show that he can guess their weight. He always guessed wrong, but the point of the whole thing was to ask the women what they really weighed at the end. The whole platform Corolla was inviting women over to was actually a giant scale. In the end they determined that women lied about their weight by about an average of 19 pounds.

60

[QUOTE=RickJay]

An IQ of 135 is REALLY high. On either the Wechsler or Stanford-Binet test it’s easily sufficient for Mensa qualification (1 in 50 is their standard, essentially.) A person with an IQ legitimately that high had a better than even chance of being the smartest kid in any regular classroom they were ever in. If they went to a big high school, say with 2000 kids, there were probably not three dozen smarter kids in the entire joint. A person with an IQ of 135 is really, really gifted. In any random group of people, like their softball team or their division at work, assuming they don’t work at NASA, or the lineup at Sears, they’ll usually be the smartest person around.

[/QUOTE]

I see what you’re saying, and I certainly don’t take 190 or 188 all that seriously. BUT, 135? Many many dopers? Easy. I don’t want to get into a “dopers are all geniuses far superior to the populace as a whole” thing, but… the SDMB is a fairly self-selecting group, and some of the things that it self-selects for are intellectual curiosity, erudition, ability to communicate clearly, etc. So if 135 is 1 in 50, then there are almost 6,000,000 Americans with IQs of 135 or higher. Say half of them are of the right age range, and 3/4 of those use the internet regularly, that’s still in the neighbrhood of 2,000,000 potential dopers with IQs of 135. Considering how many active dopers there are, I can well believe that a sizeable fraction, easily 1/10, maybe as much as 1/4, of dopers have IQs that high.

As for 140+, 150+, 160+, well… if 160+ is 1 in 11,000, that’s approximately the brightest kid in a district worth of high schools. That’s pretty smart, but… is there any reason that kid would NOT be a doper? Very smart people like poking around on the internet just like everyone else… what are they going to do, post on fark.com all the time?
To ask it a slightly different way, if 160 is 1 in 11,000, that’s 30,000 Americans. What are they doing all day long if NOT posting on the dope?

(Not to mention, of course, all the people in the world who are NOT Americans, but I focused on us because the dope is US-dominated.)
An IQ of 160 is not “12 year old who graduated from Harvard” smart, it’s “the guy who won the district-wide math competition” smart. And I’m SURE we have several of those here.