Most typical face on the planet

102 2011 03 Screen-Shot-2011-03-03-At-8.43.21-Am-1

Have you seen this man? According to National Geographic, he has the most typical face on Earth. The composite is a 28-year-old Han Chinese man. The image was created for National Geographic's special series "Population 7 Billion." Video after the jump. (Thanks, Gabe Adiv!)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Slowermo

He certainly looks familiar.
mrclamo

Well, since Chinese men outnumber Chinese women by several hundred gazillion (Sex distribution: male 51.53%; female 48.47% (2007)) I would think the average male would look a bit more frustrated.
- mellowknees
  
  you owe me a new keyboard, sir.
  
  I have inadvertently spit water all over mine.
dan

Flowing Data has a brief critique of their claim here: http://flowingdata.com/2011/03/03/most-typical-person-in-the-world/
muteboy

That’s him! That’s the one!
G Tyson

I wonder what the “average” American would look like.
Alvis

Funny; I didn’t think the most typical person would look like he just cut into a million pieces by a razor-sharp screen door slamming in his face.
- elbowling
  
  I suppose this is the mask you wear if you want to go as “Malthusian Catastrophe” to your next Halloween Party.
Anonymous

That’s the dude on LOST.
Antinous / Moderator

Wow, Charles Ng lost a lot of weight.
saurabh

I have to object to their deciding what the modal person is based on racial categorization, which is, as we all know, a complete load of horseshit. So what if “Han chinese” is the largest single racial category? Those categories are 100% baseless. If you did this kind of stuff in a stats class, you would be excoriated for drawing conclusions based on your completely arbitrary binning process. How about: random sampling of individuals across the planet (very hard), and THEN averaging their facial features?
- neokimchi
  
  yeah, but i think the idea here is that you’d be much more likely to run into a 100% han chinese guy than you would someone who’s got dna sampled from around the globe.
  
  hence, he’s more typical.
  - saurabh
    
    you’d be much more likely to run into a 100% han chinese guy
    
    And MY idea is that the notion of “100% han chinese” is a complete fiction. Care to enlighten me as to what the hell that actually means?
    - Anonymous
      
      as opposed to someone whose DNA is a probability distribution of the entire human genome?
Bemopolis

I *knew* it — Han shot first.
tkahvesi

I do love that there’s always a statistician around here to call foul.
- The Life Of Bryan
  
  I know, what are the odds, right?
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Don’t be so mean.
    - Mantissa128
      
      Pfft. An average comment.
- Anonymous
  
  I do love that there’s always a statistician around here to call foul. well… on average, yes.
Anonymous

My first thought was Jon Gosselin, although he always appears a bit more red in the face.
http://www.fancast.com/blogs/files/2009/09/300-x-300-jon-gosselin1.jpg
blueelm

Actually according to the info from National Geographic from which that image came men outnumber women in the world, though only slightly.
blueelm

I have to say I was disappointed though that it wasn’t an actual average of human faces from everywhere, but instead done based on racial facial characteristics.

…

racial facial? WTF, why does that have to rhyme?
Donald Petersen

Would it have killed them to generate a higher-resolution image? Or is this just supposed to look like what we expect a composite image to look like?

(Too busy, didn’t RTFA)
JohnnyOC

Better pick on left at the msnbc site for those “not-screen-door-effect” inclined.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/04/6190136-typical-face-is-chinese-for-now
elbowling

I suppose this is the mask you wear if you want to go as “Malthusian Catastrophe” to your next Halloween party.
rsplatpc

Isn’t that the guy that works behind the convenience store counter in every John Hughes movie?
BillyRay

He looks a little like
Kahn Souphanousinphone…
Anonymous

People should really study the difference among mode, mean and median… First step towards a statistics-aware “typical” person.
fnc

“You people all look the same to me.”
Yamara

I want to have his baby.
- Brainspore
  
  Statistically speaking, you will.
Anonymous

All Chinese guys look like images from security cameras?
Daemon

Sure, Han chinese is the single largest group… but most people aren’t Han, thus it’s atyptical to be one.
Anonymous

I’m not exactly sure how the poster intended to make us all feel about this, but I for one am glad I don’t look like that. Not even close. And there’s 9 million of them? Oy! Must be a major headache for the Chinese secret police and face recognition software.
Bodhipaksa

So it’s the most typical *male*, Han, face on the planet. Doesn’t he have a most typical female Han girlfriend? Where’s she?
Anonymous

.. Does that look like Jet Li to anyone else?