A quantitative analysis of the graying of Barack Obama's hair | Hacker News Reader

A quantitative analysis of the graying of Barack Obama's hair

pnis.co

55 pointsnkrumm12 comments

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2015 Ig Nobel award for Politics, right there.

I love this kind of 'research'. It's frivolous, but there is an underlying point about the stressfulness of presidency.

I don't think a parody is elibible for an Ig Nobel.

This paper was published in HARD PNIS, which is not a parody and uses real data.

Source: http://pnis.co/about.html

HARD PNIS is serious business.

Is this paper a parody? If yes, a parody of what?

I always figured his handlers were just having it dyed less and less to enhance the "experience" image.

Looking at the photos, it does seem like it may be dyed. There are several rather gray-looking images, followed by quite dark-looking ones.

That is probably the result of different lighting conditions. If you look at the skin you will notice it is brighter or darker as well.

I was under the impression that presidents dye their hair regularly.

If a politician is too old - dye out some (or all) of the gray. Reagan being an extreme example - not a single gray hair.

If a politician is young - Clinton, Bush, Obama - add some gray, until nature catches up.

Gray hair conveys "gravitas" - age, and experience - exploits a natural human bias. I'm sure this is focus-grouped to death. This all being in the age of Color TV and HDTV of course - I doubt Kennedy stooped to this level. Pretty punishing, and just imagine a 4K picture or better down the road.

> (graph) Gray value of Obama’s hair (expressed as % similar to Morgan Freeman’s Hair) over time, with annotations of important events. I think this line sums up the study best for me.

Well... He probably has the crappiest job on the planet...

It's not the stress of his job that is graying his hair it is the fact that BO continues to smoke cigarettes. shameful (particulry since his major accomplishment is ACA.)

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