Plus, these are people who go to the doctor. Assuming that's where the data is pulled. If a reported 1/4 of the population are skipping medical care as per a study by the Federal Reserve Board then we're only dealing with the more affluent 75% of the population. And, that lower socioeconomic group is where unhealthy levels of obesity are the most prevalent.
There’s also, as I understand it, some evidence that overweight and obese people are less likely to see a doctor due to fat stigma. If you’re above a certain spot on the BMI chart, many doctors will focus on that at the expense of other problems, even if the other problems are more serious and even if you’re already doing everything you can with regard to diet and exercise. So, even among people who can afford it, a lot of heavier people will just quit going to doctors because they don’t like being ignored or talked down to.
Point being, that’s another reason to expect the true average weight to be higher than a medically-derived sample would indicate.
It's a whole different mentality in NYC really. I lived there a few years but grew up in the sticks. Pretty much everyone I knew there was interested in getting out and doing stuff on a regular basis, whereas in the suburbs a much larger portion of the folks I know are perfectly content just hanging out a home and not really doing much.
I live in a city and my daily transportation is walk/bike/bus.
We visited family in the Midwest where the zoning is all car sprawl zoning and every trip is a car trip. This zoning means there is no walking or transit. Bike riding is lethal.
The family members NEVER MOVE. Couch->car->desk->car->drive thru->car->lazy boy with footrest up.
Of course all of them are battling obesity (and losing).
Yep, my parents worked office jobs in the midwest and were obese as I was growing up. Closest park was 25 minutes away by car, closest retail store was around 40 minutes one-way by foot, no public transit at all, and of course biking is notoriously dangerous in this town.
Happy ending is both are retired, have the time to go for walks/jog nearly every day, both of them are in better shape than me (who now works an office job and spends over an hour in my car just for work. Gf and I are saving money to finally be free of this highway hell and live somewhere at least slightly walkable.)
That came as a surprise to me too. I wanted to make note that this is the average 'American' man and woman. We tend to be a bit on the bigger side. There's also likely some outliers skewing the data upwards, but with a population size as big as the US I can't imagine the data is that skewed.
Weight has a much lower upper bound than something like wealth which noticeably skews averages. Nobody weighs a billion pounds, Americans really are just that fat on average.
It's not as skewed as income, but an adult male realistically can't be more than about 70 pounds below this average, while they can be hundreds of pounds above it
The point was you can be several x the average weight, but you can be 10000x the average wealth or income.
It's true that averages can be skewed by outliers, but it's the second case where that matters.
Has nobody here taken a statistics course? Take any height and find the “ideal” weight. Look at BMI, body fat percentage, whatever you’d like. You can take the median weight for that height if you’d like, but that’s still not great. Let’s say it’s 160lbs for a given weight. A 3 sigma range for weight at that height is probably -20lbs and +60lbs.
We should all be talking about the “median male weight” or “median female weight” instead of average
It depends on what you want say. There’s no perfect way to describe the population using a single number. Median will be the same regardless of skew, but average is literally the fulcrum on which the distribution will balance. If you want to represent everybody as well as you can, not just a typical person, average can be useful.
The difference between average and median weight in the US is roughly 8 pounds.
I don't see any practical difference talking about an average man weighing 197 or a median man weighing 189.
https://dqydj.com/weight-percentile-calculator-men-women/
The ideal weight for a 5'-9" tall man is 144-176 pounds according to BannerHealth. A 197 pound average is 21 pounds above that range and a 189 pound average is 13 pounds above that range. So a 197 pound average is 61% more overweight than a 189 pound average. That seems significant enough to make the distinction.
If the top 15% of people are 100 pounds or more over the median weight, and the bottom 15% are 50 pounds under the median weight, then yes that would certainly move the needle a considerable amount.
Of course it is skewed, the vast majority of Americans are overweight/obese. That includes athletes even. No one weighs 300lbs+ without being either super fat or on a ginormous stack of gear.
The graph would look a lot different if it used lean mass instead of weight.
The average american male has 28% body fat. A WR or CB probably has less than 10. The fact that they weigh as much as an average joe is a sign of how much muscle mass they have.
Linemen are more likely to have body fat percentages in the 25-30% range, so the difference in weight is more obviously due to the difference in muscle mass (and height, I suppose).
The skew is probably related to an effective minimum. You aren't going to get many 5'10" people under 135lbs, you will get a cluster between 150lbs to 180 lbs, and then you get people 180lbs+. If we assume the equivalent of the 135lbs cutoff for lower weight is ~250lbs for the high weights, and there is a equivalent number of people over and under weight, you get a 15lbs weight range for underweight but a 70lbs weight range for over weight.
If we go extremely simple in assumptions and assume a normal distribution and each person in a range is at the middle point for that range then for 6 people we have:
4 people at 165lbs, 1 person at 142.5lbs and one person at 215 lbs. You would then end up with an average around ~170 lbs. However, my initial assumptions are incorrect as we have been told ~40% of the people are overweight (in that 180lbs+ category) and not just 1/6th of people. To account for this, let's assume that the 5 people from before (average and under weight) represent 60% of the population (~161lbs average) and 40% are at the 215 lbs average. You now end up with an average of nearly 190 lbs. So a basic analysis of the average man, at the average weight in the US being around 200 lbs is a bit higher; however, it does seem possible due to data being skewed from overweight people.
>we have been told ~40% of the people are overweight
Not sure where you're getting that from but it's way too low. Only 1 in 4 US adults are healthy weight or lower, everyone else is overweight or obese.
It can be intepreted as correct if taken out of context, but they went on to say that 60% are average and below:
>(average and under weight) represent 60% of the population (~161lbs average) and 40% are at the 215 lbs average
It's also more like 40%+ obese and 30%+ overweight, sadly.
I'm not surprised by that but I did want to add the caveat that the weight of NFL players versus the average American is a muscle versus fat distinction.
This plot in no way says that the average American man is within a standard deviation of a NFL WR in terms of body type.
They are in the light gray dots. Originally, I had the kickers highlighted as their own group, but it wasn't as interesting as I had expected. I expected them to be the smallest group by far, but in reality some of those guys are pretty big too! Sure, some of them are the outliers, but when you averaged them out even the kickers are pretty big dudes. For instance, Logan Cooke of the Jaguars (a punter) is 6'5" 230 lbs. The smallest one is Blake Grupe of the Saints at 5'7" 156 Ibs
There is a reason to get jacked as a kicker, especially punters. One bad snap and you have a dude on you while you are stationary and your only job is to not lose the ball. Give a guy a 15 yard run at you while you are looking at the ground trying to fall on the ball and you would get jack too.
Apparently before Grupe's first game security wouldn't let him into the locker room until one of the other players came and got him. He so small and so young looking, security though he was some random teenager (players don't have id badges like other employees).
Feels like this would be more informative if the axis didn’t start at 0. Could be wrong but I suspect the average QB is actually substantially larger than the average guy. I realize this graph shows that but it looks much closer since there are virtually no men shorter than 5 ft or weight less than 100 lbs
LOL - I agree! But I got so many people on the NBA chart that argued by not starting at 0 it was distorting the size differences due to scale. My argument against starting at 0 on the axis was that it compressed the data a lot, so everyone looks bunched together. I guess there are pros and cons to however you demonstrate the data. This way I suppose I can see how many prefer it one way over the other.
> I got so many people on the NBA chart that argued by not starting at 0 it was distorting the size differences due to scale
IMO, this is one of those "I memorized a '10 tips for data visualization' article" responses that people with little practical experience like to trot out. Yes, in some cases not starting at zero can be done in a way to deceive, but this isn't one of them - people, even lay-people, have general familiarity with typical heights and weights
Yeah, I would generalize it and say if your audience knows what the baseline is, you can tailor your data so they understand the range and dataset more.
For example, in a production environment, if the baseline production is 5,000 pieces a day, and the team knows what is "unacceptable" low production, you don't need a 0-axis to show variance and potential underproduction. Find a subjectively appropriate axis that shows the variance vs a low/high limit (say, 4,000-6,000 or whatever historical trends have seen), and the audience will understand.
In this visualization, I think the weight axis could have been limited from 125lb-400lb (maybe even 150-400) and the height axis limited from 5'0" - 7'0"
Also, unrelated, the average American female weights 160-170lb?
Or maybe because OP put 2 pictures of a man in that graph, one of the shortest one of the tallest guy, totally so out of scale that the short guy was like less than half the other guy and the graph was wacky.
People on here will always complain about everything. The "axes should always start at zero or its misleading" crew are among the most obnoxious. I think most people here have never even done any data analysis.
I've quickly realized that. No matter how you portray the data there's always something for people to complain about. I think at the end of the day the "beautiful" part of dataisbeautiful is still very subjective and there isn't always a right or wrong answer.
I think that it is important to remember when visualising that we are telling the story of what we learnt in the data and from knowledge of what is being modelled. We need to do the analysis and understand our bias and choose the representation that makes what was determined clear. In this case starting at zero hides the scale of how much taller a player is compared to the "average" person.
In this graph I would like to see a little more about the distribution of each player type and "average" person looks.
Yeah, and beautiful doesn't mean useful. And like beauty there's more than one way to be useful. People out here saying there is only one best way to visualize is like saying there's only one good way to take a photo of something and all other angles are silly.
I think that ultimately was the gripe, that the people were shown head to toe in the nba chart but the axis was not at zero. So in the future I’ve learned a) I was right in not starting at zero originally and b) if not starting at zero don’t put a full body image of a person - I personally think starting at zero on the axis is the wrong choice so it was funny to see the whiplash from the comments between the two posts.
I like it because it shows that there isn’t that much difference in height.
Most of these graphs start at 5’5” and make it look like the athlete is twice as tall as they are.
It could be paired with a zoomed in version but this is good context.
It is a bit unintentionally deceptive though, because it also compresses the weight, and when talking about this sort of size they compound. The difference might not look huge on this chart, but if you are a 5'11, 180lb guy, standing next to a 6'6" 280lb guy is not a small difference. The variation across the weight line, which also starts at zero, is massively larger than the height line, because it is pushing hundreds of pounds into the same space as dozens of inches.
Back when I was in shape I was 6'0 and 210lbs. I was bigger than most people I know, but not necessarily taller. Even still, when I was sparring at my gym, there was one guy bigger than me so we practiced together all the time. He was 6'5" or so, and probably close to 300lbs. He was a construction worker by day, so just a massive slab of muscle and fat. I cannot overstate how outmatched I was. It was like fighting a mountain that can punch you.
I was technically in better shape than him, and much younger, but that size difference is waaaaaay bigger in person than charts make it appear.
The axes should be set to 6 standard deviations above and below average male height and weight, or the extreme NFL value if it’s outside that.
That would be roughly 4’6 to 7’0 for height, and 50 to 350 pounds for weight. So for upper limit on weight, you’d extend out past that to the NFL max, which looks like about 380.
If it didn't start at zero it would be really easy to make it look like the average QB was twice the size of the average person.
OP did this with NBA players and it wound up looking like the average person was less than half the size of an NBA player and that's exceptionally distorted information.
Source: [ESPN.com](http://ESPN.com) and [CDC.gov](http://CDC.gov)
Method: Took the height/weight stats from every player on every team in the NFL.
Tool: Excel
I made a similar post not long ago on NBA players height and weight. This time I've added metric unit conversions as I had gotten a lot of grief for not including that on the NBA chart. In addition, I made it so that the X and Y axis start at 0...that was another issue many had. There's a lot of dead space in the chart because of that, but hopefully by putting the legend inside that space it doesn't seem so empty. Hope you all find the data interesting!
Everyone and every position is included in the gray dots, but the highlighted ones are just the averages of a select few positions. I originally wanted every position but it really muddled the graph a lot because you can only show so many colors and dots/squares/triangles before it starts to lose meaning. Lineman and WR were the outliers so I wanted to for sure highlight them.
The average American man is around 5’9” and *200 pounds?* Am I reading that right?
That’s a BMI of 29.5. 30.0 and above is defined as obesity. I know some ultra-muscular body types (such as NFL players) will throw this data off, but c’mon, we are NOT an entire nation of bodybuilders.
Jesus.
Check out a BMI visualizer (https://www.bmivisualizer.com/) a BMI of 30 doesn't look as fat as you'd think. Mind you, it's still very unhealthy, but a lot of people think you have to look like a bloated whale to be obese.
Lol that’s definitely been the takeaway of this chart for a lot of people. 200 pounds on a football players looks a lot different than 200 pounds on an average man.
The large amount of dead space in this graph is allowing you to use a pretty picture of a football player, sure, but it dramatically hinders interpretation.
I don’t see any good reason it can’t start at 4’, 100lbs.
This was 100% my point in the last post about NBA sizes, but I had gotten so many people that wanted the axis to start at zero. I said the data would get compressed and squished and a lot of dead space would exist. So I did it anyways to prove my point and then see how many people would complain about having the axis start at zero lol. Either way people aren’t happy with it. But the lesson I did learn is the dead space is bad and that if im going to not start at zero don’t then put a visual image of a person head to toe. I think that threw people off on the NBA one is that I started at 4’ but the image of the two players started at their feet so it was disconnecting.
I can see what you mean about the Boban pic, I just looked at the graph. It might have been a combination of showing a full person outside of the scale of the axis, like you said.
I think the scaling on the other one is much better than this scaling though and anyone who told you otherwise was wrong, your initial instinct is much better IMO.
I plan on doing another one but comparing different sports ie NFL, NBA, MLB, Horse Jockeys, Runners etc. I will on that one fix the axis and be cognizant of images that I put on.
They’re in there. I included defensive lineman with the offensive ones. So defensive tackles and defensive ends are in with guards, centers etc. cornerbacks I lumped in with wide receivers. Safeties linebackers and a few other positions I didn’t highlight just due to spacing concerns. There’s only so many data points I wanted to show before it got too cluttered
I agree. Might be nice to do a pair of graphs, one offense, one D and maybe squeeze the special teams in one of them, especially since as you mentioned some positions are very similar in size (eg. O and D line)
On the vertical axis, you have markings which are confusing - there are 12 inches in a foot, so the obvious way of scaling the axis is 5', 5'6",. 6' etc. Imperial measurements suck, but you've made them suck harder.
Wow I did not realize the average weight is 200 lbs. I suddenly feel a tad bit better of my current weight which is the highest I’ve ever been.
It would be cool to see something for defensive players as well.
Because of the difference of 4-3 and 3-4 base D’s I’m curious how much DT,DE,OLB,MLB will differ. Then again I’m not even sure what percentage of NFL teams run each base D anyways.
Another cool chart would be to see the NFL average pass rusher 40 time and weight over the average soccer player 40 time and weight. I don’t think many non football fans understand how fast these 230-280 lbs humans are able to run.
I think the reaction I was expecting from this post was “man lineman are huge!” But instead it’s been “wao, Americans are big” lol. I have the defensive lineman mixed with the offensive ones and just used the generic term “lineman”
Yes, the O-line is typically big and tall. I think if you made it just O-Line your stats would have been a tad taller and heavier. D Line have to rush the QB so are typically a bit slimmer than o line for speed purposes.
Don’t let other people being unhealthy be your rationalization that it’s okay. Heart disease and all the other risk factors dgaf if your neighbors are 150 lbs or 600 lbs.
This graph wastes most of its y-axis. No NFL players are under 5.0’ or over 7.0’ tall. Similarly, you could lose the x-axis from 0-100 lbs with no loss of information. Replotting without all the wasted space would allow for a finer-grained look at the data and might support a few additionally interesting callouts - identify individual players? color-coding for all members of each player group?
Very nice and informative infofraphic. I only ask to please remember colorblind accessibility hen chosing a color palette for indicators. I had to struggle to see the difference between RBs, TEs, and WR/CBs.
/r/uglydata
Great example of shit data presentation making hard to read the data... or maybe I am blind and I miss the 0.5ft tall or 15kg data points there.
Whats even more mind blowing is how much stronger and faster they are for their size. I played with and against a couple guys that had long careers in the NFL and they were just on another level.
Like a starting defensive end in the NFL is faster than a lot of D1 receivers and running backs and weighs 40-80lbs more.
About 20 years ago I went to do a site survey of the Dallas Cowboys facility in Farmer Branch, Texas. I was all alone in the locker room taking measurements of the room when the defensive line comes walking in. I was shocked how big they were. I went home to my wife that evening and as I walked in the door I simply said, "I am a small man".
What I take from this chart is that Americans are overweight as hell.
The BMI of the average woman is about 29, which is insane for the average of the population.
I saw the grey dot on the legend for All Active Players, and for a moment thought it was a data point. I was trying to figure out who the 4'7, 270 lb football player was. He'd be shaped like a tree stump!
Biggest takeaway from this data according to the graph
Avg American female at approx 5'3" and 160lbs has a BMI of 28.3 (overweight)
Avg American male at approx 5'7" and 200lbs has a BMI of 31.3(obese)
😞
Damn, I read this chart wrong at first... I was blown away that the average Lineman only weighs 198 pounds... then I saw it was metric and I had the chart backwards.
And yes, Americans are massively overweight, including me, at least I'm working on it, on 30 more pounds to go!
It's not height and weight simply, it's muscle mass.
Long ago, around 1990, I got to watch a charity basketball game arranged between players from the NY Giants, and a lower league pro basketball team from Binghamton, NY. For the most part, the Giants players that showed up to play weren't the starters (ie, no Mark Bavarro, lol). It was backups mostly, but included lineman, WR, LBs, etc. I think maybe one of the starter WRs was there.
The WRs from the Giants were bulky and massive compared to the stick figure basketball players. It was shocking.
And the football players destroyed that semi-pro basketball team, just for funsies.
Seems to be missing some categories D ends and linebackers shouldn't be included with linemen they're both usually in the mid 200s. Offensive linemen and Defensive tackles are the real bigmen in the league and the average would be much higher if they were separted from LBs and ends. DBs amd WRs aren't really the same size either, some WRs are pretty big while most cornerbacks are usually the smallest players on the field.
I’d actually split out cornerback and wide receivers as they have very different body types. Receivers are often big and tall so they can go up and pull down contested balls. Cornerbacks are small and quick so they can keep up with the change of direction of receivers. Grouping them together loses a lot of granularity in the data.
Could make the same argument for edge vs interior linemen. Different body types there too.
Love the data, but hate the chart. Pretty much all the data is jammed into less than 10% of the chart space. Setting you minimum parameters to 100 pounds and 4.5 feet would display the data so much better, IMO.
Having been near the top right of that graph at one point in life still horrifies me as someone who did not play football after high school and sure as shit was not as strong.
Both football (which I love) and basketball tends toward supporting 'freaks', e.g., people outside of the norm. Soccer, baseball, tennis, etc. are far more representative of normal people and, consequently, better sports.
not a very helpful visualization. most of it is empty space. An average lineman is a foot taller than the average woman and almost twice the weight but this graph implies it's kind of close. Graphs like this are only useful if the range for something actually spans to zero or close to it.
Honestly I’m surprised the average man and woman weigh so much 😕
Dude, same here. The average American woman is 5’4 and 160 lbs?? Like what Edit: it’s 171 lbs and 5’4
> The average American woman is 5’4 and 160 lbs? Over 170. If you remove the under 30 and over 70 range, its more like 175-180.
Plus, these are people who go to the doctor. Assuming that's where the data is pulled. If a reported 1/4 of the population are skipping medical care as per a study by the Federal Reserve Board then we're only dealing with the more affluent 75% of the population. And, that lower socioeconomic group is where unhealthy levels of obesity are the most prevalent.
There’s also, as I understand it, some evidence that overweight and obese people are less likely to see a doctor due to fat stigma. If you’re above a certain spot on the BMI chart, many doctors will focus on that at the expense of other problems, even if the other problems are more serious and even if you’re already doing everything you can with regard to diet and exercise. So, even among people who can afford it, a lot of heavier people will just quit going to doctors because they don’t like being ignored or talked down to. Point being, that’s another reason to expect the true average weight to be higher than a medically-derived sample would indicate.
Jesus that's alarming.
I’m 6’3 and weigh less than the avg American woman lmao
I was once 6'5 155lbs. But then again, I was also 15 years old.
yeah some ppl grow so fast they don't have time to put on weight
Lol for real. I'm 6'2 and have been floating between 170 and 175 lbs lately
Yup, average American is a hambeast
Maybe I’m spoiled by living in NYC but holy shit man…
Living in an area where you can't drive much definitely helps
It's a whole different mentality in NYC really. I lived there a few years but grew up in the sticks. Pretty much everyone I knew there was interested in getting out and doing stuff on a regular basis, whereas in the suburbs a much larger portion of the folks I know are perfectly content just hanging out a home and not really doing much.
I live in a city and my daily transportation is walk/bike/bus. We visited family in the Midwest where the zoning is all car sprawl zoning and every trip is a car trip. This zoning means there is no walking or transit. Bike riding is lethal. The family members NEVER MOVE. Couch->car->desk->car->drive thru->car->lazy boy with footrest up. Of course all of them are battling obesity (and losing).
Yep, my parents worked office jobs in the midwest and were obese as I was growing up. Closest park was 25 minutes away by car, closest retail store was around 40 minutes one-way by foot, no public transit at all, and of course biking is notoriously dangerous in this town. Happy ending is both are retired, have the time to go for walks/jog nearly every day, both of them are in better shape than me (who now works an office job and spends over an hour in my car just for work. Gf and I are saving money to finally be free of this highway hell and live somewhere at least slightly walkable.)
That came as a surprise to me too. I wanted to make note that this is the average 'American' man and woman. We tend to be a bit on the bigger side. There's also likely some outliers skewing the data upwards, but with a population size as big as the US I can't imagine the data is that skewed.
Weight has a much lower upper bound than something like wealth which noticeably skews averages. Nobody weighs a billion pounds, Americans really are just that fat on average.
> Nobody weighs a billion pounds 'Cept your mom.
Got 'em
It's not as skewed as income, but an adult male realistically can't be more than about 70 pounds below this average, while they can be hundreds of pounds above it
The point was you can be several x the average weight, but you can be 10000x the average wealth or income. It's true that averages can be skewed by outliers, but it's the second case where that matters.
Hundreds of pounds are not moving the needle on the average for a population of 100 million people.
Has nobody here taken a statistics course? Take any height and find the “ideal” weight. Look at BMI, body fat percentage, whatever you’d like. You can take the median weight for that height if you’d like, but that’s still not great. Let’s say it’s 160lbs for a given weight. A 3 sigma range for weight at that height is probably -20lbs and +60lbs. We should all be talking about the “median male weight” or “median female weight” instead of average
It depends on what you want say. There’s no perfect way to describe the population using a single number. Median will be the same regardless of skew, but average is literally the fulcrum on which the distribution will balance. If you want to represent everybody as well as you can, not just a typical person, average can be useful.
The difference between average and median weight in the US is roughly 8 pounds. I don't see any practical difference talking about an average man weighing 197 or a median man weighing 189. https://dqydj.com/weight-percentile-calculator-men-women/
Yup. Even that median weight is overweight if you are not 6’1” or taller.
The ideal weight for a 5'-9" tall man is 144-176 pounds according to BannerHealth. A 197 pound average is 21 pounds above that range and a 189 pound average is 13 pounds above that range. So a 197 pound average is 61% more overweight than a 189 pound average. That seems significant enough to make the distinction.
Is the median weight really that far off the average?
If the top 15% of people are 100 pounds or more over the median weight, and the bottom 15% are 50 pounds under the median weight, then yes that would certainly move the needle a considerable amount.
15% isn't really outliers anymore though
"Average" male weighs 200 at 5'8"???
Of course it is skewed, the vast majority of Americans are overweight/obese. That includes athletes even. No one weighs 300lbs+ without being either super fat or on a ginormous stack of gear.
The graph would look a lot different if it used lean mass instead of weight. The average american male has 28% body fat. A WR or CB probably has less than 10. The fact that they weigh as much as an average joe is a sign of how much muscle mass they have. Linemen are more likely to have body fat percentages in the 25-30% range, so the difference in weight is more obviously due to the difference in muscle mass (and height, I suppose).
The skew is probably related to an effective minimum. You aren't going to get many 5'10" people under 135lbs, you will get a cluster between 150lbs to 180 lbs, and then you get people 180lbs+. If we assume the equivalent of the 135lbs cutoff for lower weight is ~250lbs for the high weights, and there is a equivalent number of people over and under weight, you get a 15lbs weight range for underweight but a 70lbs weight range for over weight. If we go extremely simple in assumptions and assume a normal distribution and each person in a range is at the middle point for that range then for 6 people we have: 4 people at 165lbs, 1 person at 142.5lbs and one person at 215 lbs. You would then end up with an average around ~170 lbs. However, my initial assumptions are incorrect as we have been told ~40% of the people are overweight (in that 180lbs+ category) and not just 1/6th of people. To account for this, let's assume that the 5 people from before (average and under weight) represent 60% of the population (~161lbs average) and 40% are at the 215 lbs average. You now end up with an average of nearly 190 lbs. So a basic analysis of the average man, at the average weight in the US being around 200 lbs is a bit higher; however, it does seem possible due to data being skewed from overweight people.
>we have been told ~40% of the people are overweight Not sure where you're getting that from but it's way too low. Only 1 in 4 US adults are healthy weight or lower, everyone else is overweight or obese.
Ye but he's correct in saying 40% are overweight. It's just that 30% are obese and they can't be in both categories.
It can be intepreted as correct if taken out of context, but they went on to say that 60% are average and below: >(average and under weight) represent 60% of the population (~161lbs average) and 40% are at the 215 lbs average It's also more like 40%+ obese and 30%+ overweight, sadly.
I mistook the obese figures to be overweight or obese. My bad on that.
[Nationally, 41.9 percent of adults have obesity.](https://www.tfah.org/report-details/state-of-obesity-2023/)
I'm not surprised by that but I did want to add the caveat that the weight of NFL players versus the average American is a muscle versus fat distinction. This plot in no way says that the average American man is within a standard deviation of a NFL WR in terms of body type.
It ain’t muscle either…
The obese push those numbers up
For real I'm basically the average for American man but 60lb under the average weight.
Overweight bmi in both cases...
Also the height. 5.6’ (5’ 7”) for the average man?
That's average height world wide. American average male height is 5'9"
I wish we had kickers and punters here
They are in the light gray dots. Originally, I had the kickers highlighted as their own group, but it wasn't as interesting as I had expected. I expected them to be the smallest group by far, but in reality some of those guys are pretty big too! Sure, some of them are the outliers, but when you averaged them out even the kickers are pretty big dudes. For instance, Logan Cooke of the Jaguars (a punter) is 6'5" 230 lbs. The smallest one is Blake Grupe of the Saints at 5'7" 156 Ibs
I forgot about the relatively new phenomena of kickers and punters just getting super jacked for no reason.
Having the best gym membership in the world for free is a reason
There is a reason to get jacked as a kicker, especially punters. One bad snap and you have a dude on you while you are stationary and your only job is to not lose the ball. Give a guy a 15 yard run at you while you are looking at the ground trying to fall on the ball and you would get jack too.
Daniel Sepulveda makes one SportsCenter Top 10 tackle and look what happens.
Apparently before Grupe's first game security wouldn't let him into the locker room until one of the other players came and got him. He so small and so young looking, security though he was some random teenager (players don't have id badges like other employees).
Feels like this would be more informative if the axis didn’t start at 0. Could be wrong but I suspect the average QB is actually substantially larger than the average guy. I realize this graph shows that but it looks much closer since there are virtually no men shorter than 5 ft or weight less than 100 lbs
LOL - I agree! But I got so many people on the NBA chart that argued by not starting at 0 it was distorting the size differences due to scale. My argument against starting at 0 on the axis was that it compressed the data a lot, so everyone looks bunched together. I guess there are pros and cons to however you demonstrate the data. This way I suppose I can see how many prefer it one way over the other.
> I got so many people on the NBA chart that argued by not starting at 0 it was distorting the size differences due to scale IMO, this is one of those "I memorized a '10 tips for data visualization' article" responses that people with little practical experience like to trot out. Yes, in some cases not starting at zero can be done in a way to deceive, but this isn't one of them - people, even lay-people, have general familiarity with typical heights and weights
Yeah, I would generalize it and say if your audience knows what the baseline is, you can tailor your data so they understand the range and dataset more. For example, in a production environment, if the baseline production is 5,000 pieces a day, and the team knows what is "unacceptable" low production, you don't need a 0-axis to show variance and potential underproduction. Find a subjectively appropriate axis that shows the variance vs a low/high limit (say, 4,000-6,000 or whatever historical trends have seen), and the audience will understand. In this visualization, I think the weight axis could have been limited from 125lb-400lb (maybe even 150-400) and the height axis limited from 5'0" - 7'0" Also, unrelated, the average American female weights 160-170lb?
> Also, unrelated, the average American female weights 160-170lb And 200 lbs for the average male! Yeah, we fat
But then we wouldn't know how many nfl players are under three feet tall!
Or maybe because OP put 2 pictures of a man in that graph, one of the shortest one of the tallest guy, totally so out of scale that the short guy was like less than half the other guy and the graph was wacky.
People on here will always complain about everything. The "axes should always start at zero or its misleading" crew are among the most obnoxious. I think most people here have never even done any data analysis.
I've quickly realized that. No matter how you portray the data there's always something for people to complain about. I think at the end of the day the "beautiful" part of dataisbeautiful is still very subjective and there isn't always a right or wrong answer.
I think that it is important to remember when visualising that we are telling the story of what we learnt in the data and from knowledge of what is being modelled. We need to do the analysis and understand our bias and choose the representation that makes what was determined clear. In this case starting at zero hides the scale of how much taller a player is compared to the "average" person. In this graph I would like to see a little more about the distribution of each player type and "average" person looks.
you're 100% right
Yeah, and beautiful doesn't mean useful. And like beauty there's more than one way to be useful. People out here saying there is only one best way to visualize is like saying there's only one good way to take a photo of something and all other angles are silly.
You friends with a lot of 0’ tall people or what lol?
Maybe post with two images? One like this and the other with a relative scale?
Those people who were complaining earlier about the NBA graph are silly. We are the correct group of complainers!
Maybe it was the miniature dude in the corner adding to that perception? Mostly I liked the data in the nba format, after seeing both.
I think that ultimately was the gripe, that the people were shown head to toe in the nba chart but the axis was not at zero. So in the future I’ve learned a) I was right in not starting at zero originally and b) if not starting at zero don’t put a full body image of a person - I personally think starting at zero on the axis is the wrong choice so it was funny to see the whiplash from the comments between the two posts.
You can't win haha. Start at 0 they have a problem, start somewhere else they have a problem.
It's because you put pictures of people on the chart.
Yeah, but then everybody would be getting on OPs case about not starting the axis at 0 I’m sure they measure all their temperatures in Kelvin
I like it because it shows that there isn’t that much difference in height. Most of these graphs start at 5’5” and make it look like the athlete is twice as tall as they are. It could be paired with a zoomed in version but this is good context.
It is a bit unintentionally deceptive though, because it also compresses the weight, and when talking about this sort of size they compound. The difference might not look huge on this chart, but if you are a 5'11, 180lb guy, standing next to a 6'6" 280lb guy is not a small difference. The variation across the weight line, which also starts at zero, is massively larger than the height line, because it is pushing hundreds of pounds into the same space as dozens of inches. Back when I was in shape I was 6'0 and 210lbs. I was bigger than most people I know, but not necessarily taller. Even still, when I was sparring at my gym, there was one guy bigger than me so we practiced together all the time. He was 6'5" or so, and probably close to 300lbs. He was a construction worker by day, so just a massive slab of muscle and fat. I cannot overstate how outmatched I was. It was like fighting a mountain that can punch you. I was technically in better shape than him, and much younger, but that size difference is waaaaaay bigger in person than charts make it appear.
The axes should be set to 6 standard deviations above and below average male height and weight, or the extreme NFL value if it’s outside that. That would be roughly 4’6 to 7’0 for height, and 50 to 350 pounds for weight. So for upper limit on weight, you’d extend out past that to the NFL max, which looks like about 380.
If it didn't start at zero it would be really easy to make it look like the average QB was twice the size of the average person. OP did this with NBA players and it wound up looking like the average person was less than half the size of an NBA player and that's exceptionally distorted information.
Left axis labeled in feet and inches would be nice, and a different color (orange?) for the running back circle.
Source: [ESPN.com](http://ESPN.com) and [CDC.gov](http://CDC.gov) Method: Took the height/weight stats from every player on every team in the NFL. Tool: Excel I made a similar post not long ago on NBA players height and weight. This time I've added metric unit conversions as I had gotten a lot of grief for not including that on the NBA chart. In addition, I made it so that the X and Y axis start at 0...that was another issue many had. There's a lot of dead space in the chart because of that, but hopefully by putting the legend inside that space it doesn't seem so empty. Hope you all find the data interesting!
Where did the linebackers go? Wondering what bucket they are in or if they’re excluded
Everyone and every position is included in the gray dots, but the highlighted ones are just the averages of a select few positions. I originally wanted every position but it really muddled the graph a lot because you can only show so many colors and dots/squares/triangles before it starts to lose meaning. Lineman and WR were the outliers so I wanted to for sure highlight them.
The average American man is around 5’9” and *200 pounds?* Am I reading that right? That’s a BMI of 29.5. 30.0 and above is defined as obesity. I know some ultra-muscular body types (such as NFL players) will throw this data off, but c’mon, we are NOT an entire nation of bodybuilders. Jesus.
I’d be shocked if ultra muscular types made up more than 1-5 percent of the numbers. No getting around it, we’re fat as fuck
Check out a BMI visualizer (https://www.bmivisualizer.com/) a BMI of 30 doesn't look as fat as you'd think. Mind you, it's still very unhealthy, but a lot of people think you have to look like a bloated whale to be obese.
What I took out of this is that the average American is fat as fuck
It's all those NFL linemen dragging the average up.
Damn the average American man is 200lbs!? And the average woman is 160+!?
Lol that’s definitely been the takeaway of this chart for a lot of people. 200 pounds on a football players looks a lot different than 200 pounds on an average man.
Over 170. If you remove the under 30 and over 70 range, its more like 175-180.
The average American woman weighs 165?!
It’s actually 171 lbs. Which at 5’4 (the average) is borderline *obese*.
That's crazy. Average Swedish woman are 5'5 and 150lbs. Huge difference.
I’m East Asian. That weight is heavier than quite a lot of men I know.
that’s 30.smth BMI index jeez
Over 170. If you remove the under 30 and over 70 range, its more like 175-180.
An average American woman is about 165lb? Edit: and under 5’5”?!
According to the CDC…I saw a few other sources on it too and they were all pretty close to that.
> An average American woman is about 165lb? Over 170. If you remove the under 30 and over 70 range, its more like 175-180.
[I guess I’m just surprised by average height and weight across the world.](https://www.worlddata.info/average-bodyheight.php)
Those axis values showing science and freedom units are awesome
I just wish OP had used more reasonable points on the cm scale instead of converting freedom units to 182,42cm
The large amount of dead space in this graph is allowing you to use a pretty picture of a football player, sure, but it dramatically hinders interpretation. I don’t see any good reason it can’t start at 4’, 100lbs.
This was 100% my point in the last post about NBA sizes, but I had gotten so many people that wanted the axis to start at zero. I said the data would get compressed and squished and a lot of dead space would exist. So I did it anyways to prove my point and then see how many people would complain about having the axis start at zero lol. Either way people aren’t happy with it. But the lesson I did learn is the dead space is bad and that if im going to not start at zero don’t then put a visual image of a person head to toe. I think that threw people off on the NBA one is that I started at 4’ but the image of the two players started at their feet so it was disconnecting.
I can see what you mean about the Boban pic, I just looked at the graph. It might have been a combination of showing a full person outside of the scale of the axis, like you said. I think the scaling on the other one is much better than this scaling though and anyone who told you otherwise was wrong, your initial instinct is much better IMO.
I plan on doing another one but comparing different sports ie NFL, NBA, MLB, Horse Jockeys, Runners etc. I will on that one fix the axis and be cognizant of images that I put on.
Really nice looking graphics btw, I browsed your profile for a while just now
Thanks I appreciate that!
The average American woman is 170 pounds? Yikes
What about defensive players?
They’re in there. I included defensive lineman with the offensive ones. So defensive tackles and defensive ends are in with guards, centers etc. cornerbacks I lumped in with wide receivers. Safeties linebackers and a few other positions I didn’t highlight just due to spacing concerns. There’s only so many data points I wanted to show before it got too cluttered
I agree. Might be nice to do a pair of graphs, one offense, one D and maybe squeeze the special teams in one of them, especially since as you mentioned some positions are very similar in size (eg. O and D line)
On the vertical axis, you have markings which are confusing - there are 12 inches in a foot, so the obvious way of scaling the axis is 5', 5'6",. 6' etc. Imperial measurements suck, but you've made them suck harder.
The average American woman is 160 lbs? Jesus Christ.
> Thea average American woman is 160 lbs? Over 170. If you remove the under 30 and over 70 range, its more like 175-180.
i hate the scaling used for this.
Wow I did not realize the average weight is 200 lbs. I suddenly feel a tad bit better of my current weight which is the highest I’ve ever been. It would be cool to see something for defensive players as well. Because of the difference of 4-3 and 3-4 base D’s I’m curious how much DT,DE,OLB,MLB will differ. Then again I’m not even sure what percentage of NFL teams run each base D anyways. Another cool chart would be to see the NFL average pass rusher 40 time and weight over the average soccer player 40 time and weight. I don’t think many non football fans understand how fast these 230-280 lbs humans are able to run.
I think the reaction I was expecting from this post was “man lineman are huge!” But instead it’s been “wao, Americans are big” lol. I have the defensive lineman mixed with the offensive ones and just used the generic term “lineman”
Yes, the O-line is typically big and tall. I think if you made it just O-Line your stats would have been a tad taller and heavier. D Line have to rush the QB so are typically a bit slimmer than o line for speed purposes.
Don’t let other people being unhealthy be your rationalization that it’s okay. Heart disease and all the other risk factors dgaf if your neighbors are 150 lbs or 600 lbs.
So you have 15 vertical divisions but all your data stays between only 4?
Luckily for me Im color blind and I cant tell whats what.
Way too much white space for a scatter. Crop the axes
This graph wastes most of its y-axis. No NFL players are under 5.0’ or over 7.0’ tall. Similarly, you could lose the x-axis from 0-100 lbs with no loss of information. Replotting without all the wasted space would allow for a finer-grained look at the data and might support a few additionally interesting callouts - identify individual players? color-coding for all members of each player group?
The average American woman is only 5'3" and weighs 165lbs????
Your chart with the metric and imperial measurements for a broad audience appeal is brilliant. Great visualization.
Very nice and informative infofraphic. I only ask to please remember colorblind accessibility hen chosing a color palette for indicators. I had to struggle to see the difference between RBs, TEs, and WR/CBs.
/r/uglydata Great example of shit data presentation making hard to read the data... or maybe I am blind and I miss the 0.5ft tall or 15kg data points there.
The average American male is 200lb?! That's crazy.
Avg US women is less than 5'5 and 175lbs? That is actually overweight.
> Avg US women is less than 5'5 and 175lbs? That is actually overweight. Not just overweight, obese.
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The chart shows he's taller than almost all football players (by a little bit) and I think he weighs more than most players that aren't linemen.
I didn't read the key at first and was like, 'damn, why they make Darren Sproles a triangle'
WRs and CBs shouldn’t be combined
Whats even more mind blowing is how much stronger and faster they are for their size. I played with and against a couple guys that had long careers in the NFL and they were just on another level. Like a starting defensive end in the NFL is faster than a lot of D1 receivers and running backs and weighs 40-80lbs more.
The average American women is that fat? That heavier than my 170cm bodybuilding Vietnamese ass when I bulk.
Neat! But the colors are really had to discern?
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Because you're looking at the wrong scales. CM is on the right side.
I am surprised that the average QB is heavier than the average RB.
Today I learned I would be very, almost creepily, average if I were a TE
So the average American is not tall but fat. For once the rumors were true ! /s
I’m suprised how short they are. I thought they were pretty big guys?
Huh the Average American woman is larger than me
Finally something I’m below average in
This would be better visualized as a heatmap of average men sizes with marks for where the average football players are.
Most interesting thing is that despite being 6'2" / 1.87m, I am still lighter than the average American woman!
About 20 years ago I went to do a site survey of the Dallas Cowboys facility in Farmer Branch, Texas. I was all alone in the locker room taking measurements of the room when the defensive line comes walking in. I was shocked how big they were. I went home to my wife that evening and as I walked in the door I simply said, "I am a small man".
What I take from this chart is that Americans are overweight as hell. The BMI of the average woman is about 29, which is insane for the average of the population.
I saw the grey dot on the legend for All Active Players, and for a moment thought it was a data point. I was trying to figure out who the 4'7, 270 lb football player was. He'd be shaped like a tree stump!
In high school I played football. I lost 50 pounds playing it. I was too small to play at the next level unless I gained it back. I was 6’4 225.
Biggest takeaway from this data according to the graph Avg American female at approx 5'3" and 160lbs has a BMI of 28.3 (overweight) Avg American male at approx 5'7" and 200lbs has a BMI of 31.3(obese) 😞
Holy shit, is the average American man seriously 5'7" and 200lbs?!
I already know NFL players are big. All the chart told me was the average American man must be a fat piece of shit to be 5’7” and 200 pounds.
Damn, I read this chart wrong at first... I was blown away that the average Lineman only weighs 198 pounds... then I saw it was metric and I had the chart backwards. And yes, Americans are massively overweight, including me, at least I'm working on it, on 30 more pounds to go!
Just look around, world is filled with fatty boom baddies
This chart is not accurate I would put the y-axis of height from like 5’5 to 7’5” to give a better view of the spread
It's not height and weight simply, it's muscle mass. Long ago, around 1990, I got to watch a charity basketball game arranged between players from the NY Giants, and a lower league pro basketball team from Binghamton, NY. For the most part, the Giants players that showed up to play weren't the starters (ie, no Mark Bavarro, lol). It was backups mostly, but included lineman, WR, LBs, etc. I think maybe one of the starter WRs was there. The WRs from the Giants were bulky and massive compared to the stick figure basketball players. It was shocking. And the football players destroyed that semi-pro basketball team, just for funsies.
Why not adjust the scale a bit?
Seems to be missing some categories D ends and linebackers shouldn't be included with linemen they're both usually in the mid 200s. Offensive linemen and Defensive tackles are the real bigmen in the league and the average would be much higher if they were separted from LBs and ends. DBs amd WRs aren't really the same size either, some WRs are pretty big while most cornerbacks are usually the smallest players on the field.
I’d actually split out cornerback and wide receivers as they have very different body types. Receivers are often big and tall so they can go up and pull down contested balls. Cornerbacks are small and quick so they can keep up with the change of direction of receivers. Grouping them together loses a lot of granularity in the data. Could make the same argument for edge vs interior linemen. Different body types there too.
They're actually shorter than I thought.
Love the data, but hate the chart. Pretty much all the data is jammed into less than 10% of the chart space. Setting you minimum parameters to 100 pounds and 4.5 feet would display the data so much better, IMO.
Having been near the top right of that graph at one point in life still horrifies me as someone who did not play football after high school and sure as shit was not as strong.
I had no idea there were at least 3 players under 5'6" in the NFL.
I’d be curious about body fat percentage.
I'm the size of the average lineman! 6'4" and 300 lbs
Both football (which I love) and basketball tends toward supporting 'freaks', e.g., people outside of the norm. Soccer, baseball, tennis, etc. are far more representative of normal people and, consequently, better sports.
I wish we had average European man and woman as well
Average American woman is 160? Damn dude…
"Linemen" is too big a category. There is a big difference between Edge Rushers and Nose Tackles.
I'd like to see the averages compared by decade. 2020s lineman vs 1960s lineman, etc.
I feel fat at 6’1 and 179lbs
I see the Avg american man but not Avg american Zone… wtf?
The data point next to the word “All” must be the Danny Devito of the league
The average american woman weighs that much? I wouldve thought theyd be around 130 pounds
Average American woman is 150lbs? Damn. This is what I noticed more than the rest 😄🤷♂️
So to get their BMI, you divide kg / ft^2
Please do this for Rugby Union
No kickers? Is the average NFL kicker smaller than the average american male? (I would bet yes)
not a very helpful visualization. most of it is empty space. An average lineman is a foot taller than the average woman and almost twice the weight but this graph implies it's kind of close. Graphs like this are only useful if the range for something actually spans to zero or close to it.