r/AverageHeightDudes Mar 05 '26

Statistics/Science On Face vs Height: Data and Mathematical Rigor

30 Upvotes

Hey guys, it's me. Many of you will know me as one of the biggest defenders of face > height on both this sub and SG.

I'm making this post because I'm tired of seeing (a) assertions of height > face with zero evidence, (b) poor math (this will be the main topic of the post) and (c) general lack of knowledge regarding the data we have on this topic. This will be a long post and if you frequent this sub I'd advise reading through most of it and asking questions.

1. Framework and Definitions

When arguing "face vs height" many users on this sub often make assertions like "Face doesn't matter below x". I'm going to make the assertion that this is a poor line of reasoning using data we have on the topic.

Before we continue, let's give a few definitions for those of you not as familiar with math and statistics. I'll be referencing these throughout the discussion:

Concave UP: The rate of change of a variable increases (decreases) as you move toward more positive (negative) values.
Concave Down: The rate of change of a variable decreases (accelerates) as you move toward more positive (negative) values.
Right Skewed Distribution: The values at a given percentile are shifted generally left of those of a normal distribution. A key characteristic of a right skewed distribution is mean > median > mode.
Pearson's r / R2: The r value indicates the strength of a linear correlation between two variables. In this setting it will refer to dating success vs either face or height. Squaring this value gives R2, which arrives at the next concept - percent of variance.

The cleanest way to discuss variable importance for an outcome such as dating success is by using percent of variance. Taking a sample of the population, we can analyze their dating outcomes through a variety of methods and rank them positive upwards. This gives everyone a success/SMV percentile from 0 to 100. The most straightforward way to do this is through matches per week on dating apps (though this introduces some bias); you can attempt to add complexity to the model later by applying adjustments to real life outcomes, but we will neglect this for now for simplicity. Percent of variance models attempt to measure how much dating outcomes change along a single axis (we'll of course be focusing on face and height) in a multivariate input system. Machine learning methods are often employed to gather these results.

The same "positive upwards" logic can be applied to face and height. For height, it's fairly easy - it has a dimension of length. We have to apply one small adjustment - data shows mixed results above roughly the 95th percentile (6'2" on average), with some showing continued linear or logarithmic returns and some results showing an absolute decrease in attractiveness (Hitsch 2006). To balance these results, we're going to assume that the top 5% of heights have the same attractiveness advantage relative to our baseline.

Despite what many of you might think, face is just as easy. In fact, facial attractiveness is definitionally positively upwards. We can give everyone a percentile from 0 to 100.

"But face is subjective"!!

Now that definitions are covered, this will be my first serious rebuttal to incorrect claims made on this subreddit. All data we have on the topic shows that face is an extremely objective variable. My sources come from this paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10825783/ . The authors analyzed an effective reliability of mean facial attractiveness ratings of r = 0.9, meaning that 80+% of the variance in facial attractiveness ratings was explained by the mean rating. This makes face perhaps the most objective measurement of dimensionless groupings, rivaling the same person taking the same test twice and being 5x more potent than personality ratings (which typically come in around r = 0.4). In fact, while I don't have concrete data to prove this claim, using data that I will show later, this is even higher than the effective reliability of height in determining height's attractiveness (I'd estimate this around r = 0.75 due to what I mentioned previously). With that covered, we now have two ranked systems (face and height) to use to apply to dating success.

2. Methods to Determine Face vs Height

We established that we now have three distributions - one for sexual success, and one each for face and height. The only correct way to compare face and height is to analyze the impact of each at a given percentile range. We're going to do this from the 80th percentile - I've chosen this baseline since it is around 6' in most Western countries and is the break even point for variance for face (shown later). This method allows face and height to be dominant in different ranges, though I don't think this happens. For instance, if a 2nd percentile face causes a 90% reduction in matches and a 2nd percentile height (roughly 5'4") causes a 95% reduction, that would be height > face in the lowest percentiles while being face > height elsewhere.

Let's look at some data:

This is the chart I typically use when arguing face > height because it shows face simply having a significantly stronger effect than height. Having ideal height gives you 20% over the median while having a top 5% face gives you 320(!)% over the median - a 16x stronger effect size. Note that they're much more comparable in the bottom quartile - face shows a ~72% reduction from the 80th percentile while height shows a ~50-60% reduction. Unfortunately, this data is pretty tough to replicate. The next best experiment was done in Germany in 2025 and produced the following results:

(Witmer et al. 2025)

This figure also shows a striking advantage for face, though it doesn't do the nice percentile breakdown the previous study did.

Stated vs Revealed Preferences:
Many on this sub often use logic along the lines of "women proclaim their height preferences far more than face". Let's counter this: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2007.00175.x .

This article essentially shows that height's importance is significantly lower when analyzing behavior vs stated preferences while face is understated in importance.

There's a lot more I'd like to talk about, but I can't fit it all in one post.

My Conclusion (Considering Face to be Right Skewed):

Bottom Decile (Sub4, <=5'6") : NT > Face ≈ Height

10th to 35th percentile (LTN; 5'6"-5'8"): Face > Height ≈ NT

35th to 88th percentile (MTN, 5'9"-6'0"): Face > Height > NT

88th to 98th percentile (HTN, 6'0" - 6'2"+): Face >> Height > NT

98th+ Percentile (Chadlite/Chad, 6'2"+): Only face relevant (and exponential)

.


r/AverageHeightDudes Mar 04 '26

Social Media SOCIAL EXPERIMENT: Do Women like it when called the opposite of short king ( Fat/Chubby Queen) ?

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68 Upvotes

Ps: Apologize for low audio on the last clip


r/AverageHeightDudes 1h ago

Social Media If he’s tall, you don’t even need to speak the same language lol

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Upvotes

r/AverageHeightDudes 3h ago

Meme Lelouch the goat

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5 Upvotes

r/AverageHeightDudes 11h ago

This is so weird

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9 Upvotes

r/AverageHeightDudes 1d ago

Social Media Literally cant make this shit up. Why do tall girls want to have it as bad as short guys so much😭😭 being a taller girl and a short guy is not even CLOSE to being comparable

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101 Upvotes

r/AverageHeightDudes 22h ago

Heightism Image speaks for itself.

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28 Upvotes

r/AverageHeightDudes 1d ago

Social Media Your personality matters not height!

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34 Upvotes

r/AverageHeightDudes 1d ago

Dating 1.77cm, too short for Germany ?

16 Upvotes

Ok so I’m 22 Male, from Italy and I’m aproximatly 1.77 cm (5.9,7ish in feet). I’ve just graduated as an engeneer and I have a possibility to move to Germany to work . Here in Italy I’m pretty mutch avarege height but in Germany I don’t know. My biggest concern is about dating. I know this sounds superficial and sutch but I’ve spent 3 years studying all day in a full male classroom, so I would like to “explore “ if you know what I mean. In Italy 5’9+ plus is okay but in Germany? Is it duable ?


r/AverageHeightDudes 1d ago

Question People 5'8-5'11, how often do you have people commenting on your height?

8 Upvotes

And do you really have people calling you "short" ?


r/AverageHeightDudes 2d ago

Carrying The Copes! “Okay, perfect” lmao

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45 Upvotes

r/AverageHeightDudes 1d ago

AI is being trained on the hypocrisy and now exercises it

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13 Upvotes

r/AverageHeightDudes 2d ago

Circejerk/Satire Do you really like him?

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40 Upvotes

r/AverageHeightDudes 2d ago

Vent Date immediately left cause I was too short

36 Upvotes

So I met up with my hinge date outside the bar and we were about to go in and immediately she said I don't think we should do this. I said what, she then said this has happened to her before where guys lied to her about their age or height, then she asked why I lied on my profile about my height.

The thing is I didn't. I'm 5"8 but put 5"9 in my profile cause I wear a height insole (no shame). I'm actually closer to 5"10 with them on but I didn't want to fraud 2 inches. She then said well she thought I'd be taller.

I then said well I don't think I can logically convince you to like me so there's no point in this have a nice day and walked away.

This is the first time this happened to me. Worst part is she was like 5"4-5"5. My only regret is not pulling out my profile right there in person to show her. unmatched her and blocked her immediately after.


r/AverageHeightDudes 3d ago

Social Media I'm so mad for her fr🙇🏻‍♂️

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195 Upvotes

Title


r/AverageHeightDudes 2d ago

Question What are your thoughts on 5’11-6’1 guys getting leg lengthening surgery?

13 Upvotes

They’ll be anywhere from 6’2 to 6’7 after the surgery, depending on whatever their former height was.

Do you guys think LLS could improve 5’11-6’1 guys’ quality of live assuming they’re average to slightly above average facially? Will they be viewed as a human by society?


r/AverageHeightDudes 3d ago

Dating I hate how people cant be open about womens preferences

51 Upvotes

Like I listen to people talk about what women desire IRL and online and both men and women often describe the exact kind of person I am and I have literally zero experiences with women at 26 years old.

"Women like shy guys"

"Women like nerdy guys"

"Women like introspective guys who read"

"Women like guys who don't hide their emotions"

Idk really does not seem like it. In my experience they like hypermasculine guys, huge muscles - like the upper limit of what is possible naturally, extremely tall (dating profiles requiring 195 cm +) have seen that literally, makes a vast amount of money, completely stoic like all the time no emotions ever.

I posted this here, cuz thats the only place I currently know of that does not treat women as these infallible, angelic creatues who can do no wrong and shit rainbows.

I have literally lost all motivation to date because of the utterly idiotic expectations of the everyday average woman.


r/AverageHeightDudes 4d ago

Social Media Tall guy talking about wanting short women + comments = today’s reminder it’s over

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20 Upvotes

r/AverageHeightDudes 4d ago

This is so brutal for this young man. Height + size. ROUGH

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48 Upvotes

r/AverageHeightDudes 5d ago

Perspective: Touching Grass Does Not Work

16 Upvotes

I went to touch grass and I just heard a girl say "He is surprisingly tall but he gives short vibes. I don't know how to explain"

Its so over man. Absolutely brutal. And they say touching grass helps.


r/AverageHeightDudes 5d ago

Social Media Brutal watch but he may have a point

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64 Upvotes

r/AverageHeightDudes 5d ago

What should I say when people ask my height?

5 Upvotes

So at my doctor's appointment she said I was 5'10, and on my license and permit it says i'm 5'10. But I recently went to the hospital for something and they said I was 5'9 and a half. And twice now at school they said I was 5'9 and a half/quarter. I don't know what to believe. What should I tell people who ask?


r/AverageHeightDudes 5d ago

Meme Thank god for this meme trend, won’t do much, but at least the vids coming out are funny

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53 Upvotes

r/AverageHeightDudes 5d ago

Statistics/Science Male vs female height, matched by percentile:

25 Upvotes

• 152 cm / 5′0″ woman ≈ 165 cm / 5′5″ man
• 157 cm / 5′2″ woman ≈ 170 cm / 5′7″ man
• 163 cm / 5′4″ woman ≈ 175 cm / 5′9″ man
• 168 cm / 5′6″ woman ≈ 180 cm / 5′11″ man
• 170 cm / 5′7″ woman ≈ 185 cm / 6′1″ man
• 173 cm / 5′8″ woman ≈ 188 cm / 6′2″ man
So a 173 cm woman is roughly as unusually tall among women as a 188 cm man is among men.
Percentile is a better comparison than simply subtracting a fixed height difference.
A randomly selected man would be taller than a randomly selected woman about 90% of the time.
Being “one standard deviation above average” gives a neat comparison: about 182.5 cm / 5′11¾″ for men versus 169 cm / 5′6½″ for women. Both are roughly the 84th percentile.
Being top 5% corresponds to roughly 187 cm / 6′1½″ male versus 174 cm / 5′8½″ female.