xkcd presents: color survey results
Who, looking at the rainbow, is able to indicate the exact boundary where the blue tones end and the orange ones begin? We clearly see the difference in colors, but where does one replace the other? This is also the case with diseases of the mind.
- Herman Melville, "Billy Bad, the fore-mars sailor"
Orange? Red? I do not know what and believe!
- Anonymous, “Poll about flowers”
IF THE FOLLOWING QUESTION WILL BE AGAIN ABOUT COLOR I EXPLAIN YOUR HEART WITH A FLAIN AND WILL EAT IT
- Anonymous, “Poll about flowers”
')
Many thanks to all who took part in the survey! 222 thousand questionnaires were processed, containing more than five million color names. Answers are no longer accepted (already three years old) , but if you are curious, here are the questions and instructions:
First, some interesting facts:
In general, I received a lot of pleasure analyzing your answers. I liked the results too; even in spite of the fact that such a “survey” approach has its limits (which will be discussed at the end of the post), the amount of data collected in itself is admirable.
By a strange coincidence, on the same night, when I opened the survey for general access, the following image appeared on the Doghouse Diaries website:
I thought that now I can check how true this is. After the survey came to an end, I made my version using the collected data:
In fact, women just use prefixes a little more often (such as “brightly”), but otherwise they agree with men (and some other differences can be attributed to the imperfection of the sample).
Then I decided to define the "most masculine" and "most feminine" colors. That is, I was looking for colors that men often called, and women rarely (and vice versa).
Here is a list of the "most feminine" colors:
Magnificent set, what else to say. Immediately, an incense bomb placed in the Bed Bath & Beyond is presented. All right, and now we will look at the second list.
“Male” colors:
I ... by the way, this is not my typo in the fifth paragraph - the only color in this list is the word "beige", typed with an error. This can not be attributed to a dozen of illiterate users - I took into account the number of people who named the color, and not how many times the color was named. And this is after the elimination of spammers.
In short, I am ashamed of the entire male race. But it's time to move on:
I managed to quite accurately determine the RGB values ​​of about a thousand colors. Here are the first 48 of them:
A full table of 954 colors is available here , or as a text file . I'm not sure about whether to use this data as the new X11 rgb.txt . Most likely, the transition will be very painful.
The choice of RGB values ​​for color is based on the coordinates of a point in the color space in which the distribution density of responses for this color was maximum. I tried to just take the geometric mean (which was wrong in principle ), iterate over the coordinates of the points suitable for the role of “center” (too slow), fit the nuclear density functions (too hard), but in the end just ran a randomized search several times and took the mean. If someone is interested in the details, they are listed at the end of the table of colors.
Problems with spelling have arisen for many:
Note that the correct version is missing. The fact is that I, too, could not write this word correctly and relied on Google when I compiled the tablet:
But now I know a simple rule: you can just mentally break a word into parts - “fuch-sia” (almost like “fuck-sia”).
In addition to errors, there were also frank attempts to spam a poll, which I fought in several ways. First, I did not take into account those people who entered too many “rare” names (that is, those who were not met in the answers of other people). Secondly, users were rejected, who equally called several colors that differed greatly in hue (most often they introduced the same color over and over again). Some wrote scripts to facilitate their work; the same man won (judging from the data of the filters), who named 2400 flowers in one short racist insult.
Part of the survey (1.5 million results) was limited to three faces of the RGB-cube. Here is a map of this region with the boundaries drawn between the colors:
You can also download a larger map , a full-scale map or data in text format .
As I said, the data obtained in this way cannot be fully relied upon. For example, previous colors affect how a person perceives the next color. Moreover, the color of the screens is different; RGB is not an absolute color space. Fortunately, I was only interested in how the colors look on the average monitor, so I analyzed only the responses of users who indicated that they use a normal monitor (LCD - more than 90%, CRT - 6%) and do not suffer from color blindness.
In general, color is a very fascinating subject for study, especially considering that each of us has a stock of scattered (and often contradictory) knowledge about color perception, light waves, basic colors, color models and a rainbow. If you are interested, I advise you to read the Feynman lectures on physics (vol. 1, ch. 35), the Color FAQ of Charles Poynton (in English), or follow the links from Wikipedia .
Finally, here are some unusual colors named during the survey.
... Most of them are difficult to translate. I apologize in advance to the unknown boy, next to whom I had to put the ugly word "sweatshirt", as well as all those readers who know English.
If you have your own ideas about how to analyze this data, they are available here as a SQLite database. I will be very happy to know what happened to you; Email me at xkcd@xkcd.com (please, in English) .
- Herman Melville, "Billy Bad, the fore-mars sailor"
Orange? Red? I do not know what and believe!
- Anonymous, “Poll about flowers”
IF THE FOLLOWING QUESTION WILL BE AGAIN ABOUT COLOR I EXPLAIN YOUR HEART WITH A FLAIN AND WILL EAT IT
- Anonymous, “Poll about flowers”
')
Many thanks to all who took part in the survey! 222 thousand questionnaires were processed, containing more than five million color names. Answers are no longer accepted (already three years old) , but if you are curious, here are the questions and instructions:
- What is your monitor?
- I do not know
- LCD (flat panel or laptop screen)
- CRT (large box with glass screen)
- other (projector, e-ink, ...)
- What is the color temperature of your monitor? If you do not know, select the option "I do not know" or try to find out in the monitor settings.
- What is the contrast ratio (gamma) of your monitor?
- Do you distinguish colors?
- Do you have a Y chromosome? If you are not sure, select “yes” if you were male at birth, and “no” if female.
- What is your native language? (Whatever it is, please enter the color names in English.)
On each survey page, type the name of the color that you see, and press Enter. It is possible to respond both clearly and vaguely; "Green" and "light olive" are equally good. You can also give the same answer several times.
The survey has no explicit end. You can answer many questions at once, take a break and continue later. Share the link with your friends so they can participate too. The main thing - do not confer.
It's okay if you made a typo; just keep answering. The "back" button will not bring you back to the previous color, but will only lead to the fact that several answers will remain unrecorded.
First, some interesting facts:
- If you make people call colors long enough, they become riotous.
- Whatever anyone says, “gag” (puke) and “vomit” (vomit) are also colors.
- Colorblind often non-color blind enter “fuck this” and stop responding.
- As many have supposed, “blue” (indigo) was included in the rainbow only to have seven colors, and also because every hunter wants to know where the pheasant is sitting (ROY G. BIV). In fact, every hunter wants to know where the pub (ROY GBP), the giant hare where to shoot (ROYGTBP) or even the king where to meet (ROYGCBP).
- Twenty people have inserted the 'drop table' SQL code into their answers. Great try, guys, keep up the good work.
- No one could correctly write the word "fuchsia" (fuchsia).
In general, I received a lot of pleasure analyzing your answers. I liked the results too; even in spite of the fact that such a “survey” approach has its limits (which will be discussed at the end of the post), the amount of data collected in itself is admirable.
Floor
By a strange coincidence, on the same night, when I opened the survey for general access, the following image appeared on the Doghouse Diaries website:
I thought that now I can check how true this is. After the survey came to an end, I made my version using the collected data:
In fact, women just use prefixes a little more often (such as “brightly”), but otherwise they agree with men (and some other differences can be attributed to the imperfection of the sample).
Then I decided to define the "most masculine" and "most feminine" colors. That is, I was looking for colors that men often called, and women rarely (and vice versa).
Here is a list of the "most feminine" colors:
- faded greenish blue (Dusty Teal)
- Blush (Blush Pink)
- faded lavender (Dusty Lavender)
- Butter (Butter Yellow)
- dusky rose
Magnificent set, what else to say. Immediately, an incense bomb placed in the Bed Bath & Beyond is presented. All right, and now we will look at the second list.
“Male” colors:
- Penis
- Gay
- WTF
- I do not know (Dunno)
- running (Baige)
I ... by the way, this is not my typo in the fifth paragraph - the only color in this list is the word "beige", typed with an error. This can not be attributed to a dozen of illiterate users - I took into account the number of people who named the color, and not how many times the color was named. And this is after the elimination of spammers.
In short, I am ashamed of the entire male race. But it's time to move on:
Rgb
I managed to quite accurately determine the RGB values ​​of about a thousand colors. Here are the first 48 of them:
A full table of 954 colors is available here , or as a text file . I'm not sure about whether to use this data as the new X11 rgb.txt . Most likely, the transition will be very painful.
The choice of RGB values ​​for color is based on the coordinates of a point in the color space in which the distribution density of responses for this color was maximum. I tried to just take the geometric mean (which was wrong in principle ), iterate over the coordinates of the points suitable for the role of “center” (too slow), fit the nuclear density functions (too hard), but in the end just ran a randomized search several times and took the mean. If someone is interested in the details, they are listed at the end of the table of colors.
Spelling and spam
Problems with spelling have arisen for many:
Note that the correct version is missing. The fact is that I, too, could not write this word correctly and relied on Google when I compiled the tablet:
But now I know a simple rule: you can just mentally break a word into parts - “fuch-sia” (almost like “fuck-sia”).
In addition to errors, there were also frank attempts to spam a poll, which I fought in several ways. First, I did not take into account those people who entered too many “rare” names (that is, those who were not met in the answers of other people). Secondly, users were rejected, who equally called several colors that differed greatly in hue (most often they introduced the same color over and over again). Some wrote scripts to facilitate their work; the same man won (judging from the data of the filters), who named 2400 flowers in one short racist insult.
Map
Part of the survey (1.5 million results) was limited to three faces of the RGB-cube. Here is a map of this region with the boundaries drawn between the colors:
You can also download a larger map , a full-scale map or data in text format .
Main disadvantages
As I said, the data obtained in this way cannot be fully relied upon. For example, previous colors affect how a person perceives the next color. Moreover, the color of the screens is different; RGB is not an absolute color space. Fortunately, I was only interested in how the colors look on the average monitor, so I analyzed only the responses of users who indicated that they use a normal monitor (LCD - more than 90%, CRT - 6%) and do not suffer from color blindness.
In general, color is a very fascinating subject for study, especially considering that each of us has a stock of scattered (and often contradictory) knowledge about color perception, light waves, basic colors, color models and a rainbow. If you are interested, I advise you to read the Feynman lectures on physics (vol. 1, ch. 35), the Color FAQ of Charles Poynton (in English), or follow the links from Wikipedia .
Sundries
Finally, here are some unusual colors named during the survey.
... Most of them are difficult to translate. I apologize in advance to the unknown boy, next to whom I had to put the ugly word "sweatshirt", as well as all those readers who know English.
If you have your own ideas about how to analyze this data, they are available here as a SQLite database. I will be very happy to know what happened to you; Email me at xkcd@xkcd.com (please, in English) .
ColorDB - data from the main part of the survey, SatOnly - from the one in which only colors from the faces of the RGB-cube were shown, on a black and white background.Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/187334/
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