Mildly Interesting

My question (do taller women have a preference for less height difference compared to shorter women) was actually answered by the graph, because the slope of the line is less than 1.

~~Wot.~~

~~If the slope of the line was less than one, it would point downward, descend, as it moves to the right.~~

~~None of the lines in graph 1 do this.~~

~~???~~

I am dumb, I described a slope of 0, not 1.

Derp.

That being said... every line on graph 1 has a slope less than 1, so this is not a meaningful evaluation to determine anything, in and of itself.

A 1.6m woman seems to most prefer a 1.78m partner (18cm taller), whereas a 1.8m woman seems to prefer a 1.89m partner (9cm taller). I other words, it's not that they're less choosy, it's just that they expect a smaller delta when they themselves are tall.

Its not a delta, its a variance range. Delta typically refers to change over time.

Also, I am using 'height-choosy' as a colloquial way of saying that that variance range expands or contracts.

If the variance narrows, this is more height-choosy, if it expands, this is less height-choosy.

Also also, graph 1 shows the mean of the acceptable height range of a partner.

Not the ideal.

That's graph 2.

More on that later.

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Anyway, from graph 1, we can see that women actually get more height-choosy the shorter they are, as graph 1 shows the variance range for acceptable male heights contracting as the woman is shorter.

It also seems to contract more sharply for women than men, ie, the CI lines for preferred male height would intersect closer to the average height of women, than the CI lines for the preffered height of females intersect as compared to average male height.

...

But, there are not exact figures on that kind of math, this is what I meant by the paper not specifically going into detail about this, such thst we could get another single number that could be used as a ratio.

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Basically, women get more height-choosy as they are themselves shorter, than men get height-choosy as they themselves are taller.

Shorter women height discriminate more than taller men do... is another way you could say that.

This bodes poorly for our Short King.

Of course, the thick line in that graph doesn't correspond with the headline numbers mentioned (21cm), but I also notice that the thick line isn't the center of the acceptable range.

The 21 cm vs 8 cm thing comes from the ideal height difference for each sex/gender, ie, the highest score on the second graph, graph 2 in my post.

Men, black dot, get their highest score at being 8cm taller, women, white dot, get their highest score at being 21cm shorter.

Ideal != mean of acceptable height ranges.

If you read the paper, you can find more explanation and a more detailed version of the 8 vs 21 ideal metric, with its own CI and SD and such.

I use 8 and 21 as rounded figures, so I don't have to make things potentially even more overcomplicated, and also the authors themselves did this in their abstract.

That is, women seem to be more forgiving of people who are taller than their ideal than they are of people who are shorter than their ideal. That's an interesting finding, too.

You're still mixing up 'ideal' with 'mean of acceptable range'.

But, if you make that replacement, then yes this is correct, this is a good point to make, unfrotunately this also bodes poorly for our Short King.

Not only does the mean of the acceptable male height drop more quickly as a woman is shorter, than the same for men as they get taller...

Yeah, the upper bound is further from the mean than the lower bound, ie, womens preferences generally skew toward accepting taller men, more than accepting shorter men.