Nathan Poffenbarger’s Facebook Profile
Sources close to the Cornell Blog have supplied us with Nathan Poffenbarger’s Facebook Profile. As you can see, it’s been removed, probably at the request of his lawyer:
That, however, doesn’t stop us from examining Poffenbarger’s Facebook friends, which are still visible. In fact, we can even classify them by race:
The first thing you’ll notice is that none of his facebook friends are black, although 12% of Americans are. That aside, the number of white people he knows is on par with the 2000 US Census average of 75%, but he’s friends with about 4 times as many Asians as the national average of 3.6%. Of course, the entrance rates for Cornell are shifted from these numbers, but as Poffenbarger is a transfer student, I’d rather compare with nationwide statistics. Now let’s look at gender:
This is a little inverted–according to the USA Today, 57% of people attending college are now women, and yet Nathan Poffenbarger’s profile shows only 42.2% of his friends as female. That’s a difference of 15% from the national average, and leads to ask the question, “Did Nathan Poffenbarger mostly associate with white males like himself?” The answer is .71 * .58 = 41% of his friends are white males. This is in contrast to the expected value of .75 * .43 = 32%. Even more troubling is that he has no black facebook friends.
Other interesting details gleaned from his profile include his AIM name (poffpoison), his cellphone number (301.639.0261), his net id (nhp8@cornell.edu), and his dormitory address (Transfer Center 1327). Here is his full profile:
Apparently I can still poke him:
Update
Oddly, his profile is back online, albeit with anything resembling contact information gone. Facebook glitch or change or heart? You decide.
| This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 1st, 2006 at 10:42 pm and is tagged with nathan poffenbarger, facebook friends, entrance rates, usa today, aim name, cellphone number, us census, attending college, dormitory, glitch, asians, cornell, lawyer, statistics, heart, blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
3 Responses to “Nathan Poffenbarger’s Facebook Profile”
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“black top+ black mini+ fishnets+ black knee length boots+ bad experiences in dating= Anti-V Day.”
Black is bad? … His friends are racist too!!!
i sincerely hope you’re not serious about those pie charts. By your facebook logic, I think the vast majority of people on facebook could be labeled “racist” because their facebook stats do not conform to the “national average” This includes black, hispanic, and asian students whose friends are mostly black, hispanic and asian.
A NATIONAL average obscures such wild differences in demography that using it for this purpose is preposterous. Using Cornell stats, or those from the school/neighborhood where he transferred from, would be marginally more appropriate. Even more appropriate would be analyzing figures from his classes or his dorm, to see the people he actually comes in contact with. Cornell is a huge school and a lot of people find their cliques and don’t come out.
More importantly, however, those factors don’t alleviate the fact that an average is an average, not a figure that prescribes exactly what all people should conform to.
(I certainly don’t plan on having 2 and a half children when I’m older)
I’m not trying to apologize for Nathan. It’s clear to me that what he did was a hate crime, motivated by race, and he should be punished accordingly. But I think using faulty logic to try to support that only hurts the case.
How do YOUR facebook stats compare to the “national average”?
Whoever wrote this analysis is a dumbshit. Facebook.com is not an accurate indicate to determine if someone is a ‘racist.’ Furthermore, just by posting this, you have insulted yourself and the Cornell institution that you represent. How do you classify someone by race? Race is a social construction. In essence, by conducting this study, you have proved that you harbor racial prejudices. When you post something up like this, do not lump people in categories. Anyway, to enlighten your dumbass, Arab isn’t even a race; its an ethnic background.