In light of #TheDress “controversy,” Facebook crunched the numbers of status updates and let us know that younger males were more likely to see the dress as blue and black, while older women saw it as white and gold. We've got all the data here.
In light of #TheDress “controversy,” Facebook crunched the numbers of status updates and let us know some demographics. In all, 42 percent of Facebook users choosing a side were on team Black and Blue, while 58 percent were on team White and Gold. Here’s the data in full:
GenderOne natural starting place to look was gender, where vision differences are well-known: for instance, 8% of men are colorblind, while only 1 in 200 women is. We found a significant gender split — controlling for other variables, men were more likely to vote black and blue by 6%.
AgeThe younger a person was, the more likely they were to believe the dress was black and blue. All other things being equal, a whopping 10% more of 13-17 year old users were on team Black and Blue, compared to 55-64 year old users. The below chart shows the difference in the percentage of people voting Black/Blue relative to the 25-34 year old crowd.
InterfaceWe wondered if the interface used by the person might have something to do with the percentage: after all, the same image might visually look very different depending on the light signature of the device used to view it. Making the assumption that people posted to Facebook on the same device they used to view the image, this was indeed the case: relative to people posting from a computer, 6% more iPhone users said that the dress was white and gold, while this number was 7% for Android users! These numbers, which are controlled for the other factors mentioned in this note, may be related not only to the devices in question but to the locations in which one uses them (for instance, presumably mobile users are far more likely to be outside).
Time of dayOne of the major breaks in the Case of the Colorful Dress came when the Internet managed to track down the actual dress, which was duly revealed to be blue and black. As this information spread through the network, people gradually started shifting their opinion to black and blue (or perhaps the black-and-blue side felt more emboldened). By midnight Eastern time, the fraction of people voting black and blue had risen by 4%.The dress that broke the internet also produced a fascinating natural experiment about vision. We see that men are significantly more likely to perceive the dress as black and blue; so are younger people, and people on a desktop instead of a phone. Finally, as the night went on and more people knew the truth, people gravitated — at least publicly — towards the winning team. We’re data scientists, not oculists or neurologists; we’ll leave speculation about exactly how this perceptual difference occurs up to the experts. But this one dress provides a fascinating window into how human vision and the brain it feeds can perceive things so differently.
Funny, that’s completely the opposite to my observations. When I had the argument with my male/female friends. Irrespective of their age, 100% of the males saw the dress as white (ish) and gold and all the females saw it (just like I did) as blue and black :) Statistics…