this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 237 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (32 children)

For Americans who have the height mode of their brain stuck in "Freedom Units":

Anna Smrek is roughly 6' 9"

'Short King' is roughly 5' 3"

...

For data nerds:

Going by total data for the whole globe, all people:

https://www.gigacalculator.com/calculators/height-percentile-calculator.php

Anna is ... off the charts, one of if not the actual tallest adult women in the world, literally breaks the calculator.

Anna would be at... the 99.9(8/9)% percentile of men by height, which means that if you use 8.2 billion as a world population, there are at most approximately 1.6 million men as tall or taller than her.

EDIT: I forgor to divide by two, women vs men, so uh, 800k.

===

'Short King' is under the 1st percentile of men (0.77), he is shorter than 99.3%+ of adult men.

'Short King' would be at about the 25th percentile of women by height, which means he is actually still as tall or taller than 25% of women, approximately 2 billion.

EDIT: I did the same forgor /2, so, 1 billion, thanks to FundMECFSResearch for catching my error!

===

Average global male height ~= 178 cm / 5' 10"

Average global female height ~= 165 cm / 5' 5"

...

Possibly also relevant:

https://www.gotquestions.org/how-tall-was-Goliath.html

If you use a more reasonable and realistic measurement of cubits and spans, and go with the Septuagint version of the Old Testament/Torah...

Goliath, the mythical warrior felled by David and his sling, whose name is now just a common euphemism for 'giant'...

Yeah he was only about 6' 6", or about 198 cm.

So...Anna could probably roughly rest her nose on the top of Goliath's head, without bending her neck (or at least not much).

...

Another fun addendum, for I guess dating data nerds?:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886913000020

(If someone can find a more recent study that specifically looks into this, I'd appreciate it!)

Broadly speaking, women prefer taller men more strongly than men prefer shorter women, by a factor of roughly 2.625x.

Women prefer, on average, a larger height difference between themselves and their partner (i.e. males being much taller than themselves) than men do. This effect is even more pronounced when examining satisfaction with actual partner height: women are most satisfied when their partner was 21 cm taller, whereas men are most satisfied when they were 8 cm taller than their partner.

In Freedom Units, thats roughly women being most satisfied with a man 8 inches taller than them, men being most satisfied with a woman about 3 inches shorter than them.

This means a 5' 10" average guy will tend to be well satisfied with a 5' 7" woman's height, but she will tend to not be well satisfied with the man's height, herself on average, ideally, looking for a 6' 3" man.

Even if it was a 5' 10" man and an [EDIT: Whoops, too many numbers, too fast, this would actually be a somewhat shorter than] average 5' 3" woman, she'd still tend to ideally prefer a 5' 11" man, on average.

So, to more accurately assess 'Short King's realistic dating pool, we actually need to find women who are 8 inches shorter than him.

And that works out to women 4' 7" or shorter.

Which is the 0.02 percentile... meaning that 'Short King's realistic dating pool is at worst, just as small as the number of men who are as tall or taller than Anna.

Or, perhaps both Anna and Short King need to find partners who simply accept them and are satisfied by them via being uncommonly partner-height indifferent.

Good luck to both of them!

[–] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

This effect is even more pronounced when examining satisfaction with actual partner height: women are most satisfied when their partner was 21 cm taller, whereas men are most satisfied when they were 8 cm taller than their partner.

I don't have access to the full article, but it sounds like they didn't examine the sliding scale of height preferences, by one's own height.

The article says that taller people have a taller ideal height for their partners. And it also says that on average women's preference is a partner 21cm taller than themselves, and men had a preference for 8cm shorter. But from the publicly available text, it doesn't seem to report on whether that preferred delta between one's own height and the ideal partner height changed with the absolute height of themselves.

So I'm curious: does the data support the conclusion that a 5' (1.52m) woman would prefer a 5'8" (1.73m) partner, and that a 5'8" (1.73m) woman would also still prefer that 21cm/8 inch difference, looking for a 6'4" (1.94) partner? Or is there a sliding scale where already tall people aren't exactly looking for excessively unusual outliers, and that the preference of tall women is something smaller than 21cm, such that the overall average might be that very short women prefer a big height difference but very tall women prefer a small height difference?

[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I am a 5'9" woman and prefer guys around my height, anecdotally all the women I know who want tall guys are themselves short.

It's a weak preference but yeah I think since I go through life being around the same height as most guys I meet I don't have such a strong association with height as a sex difference, if that makes sense.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

That puts your ideal partner height roughly 1.8 SDs from the mean of acceptable male partner heights for all women your height...

Which works out to something like at least 70% of women your height disagreeing with your preference, or not having anything close to that preference range themselves.

Uh, ok, dropping out of math brain:

Yeah I totally get that as an explanation, and that it... just isn't really something that important to you.

But!

This is less odd for me because I am a dude, and as the study shows, being ok with a roughly close height match, guy a little on the taller side, is the widespread ideal for guys, whereas women generally tend to hate this kind of setup, or uh, prefer it the least out if all possible partner height matchups.

So uh, all that being said:

So, if you're single... well I uh, happen to be just an inch taller than you, I've uh, mentioned my uh, ideals, you've mentioned yours... would you happen to be into data-dumping autists as well?

=P

[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ha! I am probably old enough to be your mom and unfortunately for you my two straight daughters have partners. But worry not, medium height man of numbers. The benefit of being able to kiss without throwing my neck out, never having to move the seat in the car, I'm sure you can sell the benefits of same-height relationships to someone.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Hahaha!

Well, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, and either way, pleasure talking with you, hah!

I suspect I am older than you think I am, but I appreciate an honest answer to that, all the same.

Yeah, I have been able to uh, 'sell' a similar height pairing in the past, it was good for a time, but I guess you could say she and I both had to ramble on, different desired life paths... and perhaps oddly, that's happened to me with a few gals, something like a one to three year relationship, and then a split, sometimes mutual and amicable, sometimes very ... not that.

C'est la vie.

Thank you for induldging my data-nerdiness enough to give an interesting, and honest, data oriented reply.

=D

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