Height Fun Facts

A friend of a friend with access to the National Health and Nutrition Examinations Survey data looked into the "how many seven footers are there?" question for me and found that the six years of the survey have counted over 3,000 people of whom . . . none are taller than 6 foot 8 inches. Which is to say that "big man" sized people are, in fact, extremely rare. What's more, according to an exhibit I saw at the Mutter Museum last weekend, a majority of people taller than about 6'10" actually suffer from pathological pituitary gland disorders (Sun Ming Ming, for example) that make them ill-suited to be athletes.

The point of this, you'll recall, was to try and estimate what proportion of age-appropriate seven footers are professional basketball players. Perhaps the question should be further refined to include information about this pituitary business. A few super-tall people who, as best I can tell, aren't basketball players are Leonid Stadnyk, Xi Shun, and Ajaz Ahmed. Angus MacAskill at 7'9" was apparently the tallest person recorded without a serious growth disorder, but having been born in Scotland in 1825, basketball wasn't an option.

Comments

"six years of the survey have counted over 3,000 people of whom . . . none are taller than 6 foot 8 inches"

you want to try rewriting that so that it says what you mean?

Currently it says that there are over 3,000 people in the world who are under 6'8".

But we already knew that.

Posted by kid bitzer | November 22, 2006 3:45 PM

And according to Kid Bitzer's post, one-of-one commenters here is a pedantic pain in the ass!

Posted by Mike | November 22, 2006 4:14 PM

A lot of us have lived in fairly densely populated cities, and how many people have we seen who were anywhere near seven feet tall? I think I've seen *one* who I didn't immediately recognize as a basketball player, and judging by his body and apparent fitness, I'd guess he was one.

Posted by ogged | November 22, 2006 4:40 PM

I don't think kid blitzer is correct in criticizing the sentence; to me, the sentence appears to be correct.

A survey takes a sample and makes statements about the population at large based on the sample, right? And the relevant things to look at is the size of the sample and the number of items you are trying to make a statement about that appear in that sample. Matthew said that the survey has a sample of 3000, and the number of persons over 6'8" (what he is trying to make a statement about) is zero. Which is precisely the information we need for the inference he is leading us to draw: based on the sample the number of persons in the population at large over 6'8" must be small.

Posted by Al | November 22, 2006 4:43 PM

I wasted all this time tracking down estimates of standard deviation and the mean, only to find that my figures concluded there are only 11 black men over 7' in the U.S. Then my next Google search took me straight to your comments section where other people had tried the same thing and concluded that height ain't really a normal distribution, particularly when you are looking at the ends of the scale. Blah.

Are there more than 11 black men over 7' in the NBA? Maybe I was right after all.

Posted by neil | November 22, 2006 4:44 PM

Oh, and kid bitzer is 5'2".

Posted by ogged | November 22, 2006 4:45 PM

(The reason I did black men is because that was the first plausible-looking NHANES figure I found cited without having to dig into the data myself. FWIW, they said 176.5cm is the mean and 7.6cm is the standard deviation.)

Posted by neil | November 22, 2006 4:48 PM

Here in the midwest, seeing a 6'6" to 6'8" guy isn't especially rare. I am 6'3" and while taller than most, have to look up at quite a few people.

Posted by eric | November 22, 2006 4:57 PM

If you dig in the NHANES data a little more, you can find published percentile charts for height, weight, and BMI.

Here's the one for height for males age 20+: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhanes/t11.pdf

Amazingly, the 95%ile for height among males 20-29 is 6'2"!

The data is a little out of data (1988-1994), but I doubt the USAs height distribution has changed much in the past decade or so.

And kid bitzer, if each year's set of respondents is a random sample, then you would expect that the distribution in heights would be pretty close to the distribution in the population (relative to the margin of error, which is probably something like plus/minus 4.4%). No 7 footers means n the sample means that there are very few in the population.

Posted by ur_land | November 22, 2006 4:57 PM

I thought of Michael Crichton and David Prowse (the actor in the Vader suit) but they turn out to be 6'9" and 6'7", respectively. And the tallest man I've ever seen in person was probably 6'7" or 6'8", although I suspect I'm bad at estimating height in people who are more than four or five inches taller than me (6'1") since I have the same trouble with people more than four or five inches shorter. Like Eric I see a lot of people in the "NBA forward" height range, but I've never seen anyone taller. Anecdotally, 6'10" seems infinitely rarer than 6'8". The other side of the growth-disorder issue is that lots of people become more delicate as they get taller - one of my best friends' dad is 6'7", and he's broken his ankles on numerous occasions. Manute Bol (a foot taller, but still) basically couldn't jump without fear of injury.

Posted by Quarterican | November 22, 2006 5:01 PM

If not basketball, then circuses. E.g., Eddie Carmel:

http://www.npr.org/about/press/990916.giant.html

Posted by KH | November 22, 2006 5:20 PM

c'mon, I'm a full 5'3" with shoes on! And I used to get an extra half-inch or so when I had hair to come up on top!

But really--on first read, I didn't think MY was referring to a 3000-member random sampling of the entire population.

I thought he was referring to a study which looked at 3,000 people *alleged* to be over 7 ft, that concluded that none of them were. (See, e.g., the story of Andre the Giant; claimed height of 7'4", probably around 6'10 max).

Now that I see it was actually a random sample of the entire population, I withdraw my objection--the fact that no one was over 6'8" in a *representative* sample does indeed tell us something about the rarity of such people in the population at large.

In other words: I misread it.

On the other hand, I still admit to being a pedantic pain in the ass, no matter what you make of this exchange.

Posted by kid bitzer | November 22, 2006 5:48 PM

Neil,

I wouldn't be surprised if there are less than 11 black men in the NBA who are truly over 7' tall. Remember heights are fudged a lot, many guys listed as 7 footers are probably 6'10" or 6'11"

Posted by Eric | November 22, 2006 5:48 PM

Kib B,

Are you sure about Andre, IIRC from the A&E bio I saw on him years ago he really was that tall. He had that disease where basically his body never stopped growing, they have footage of him from the early 70s when he was a young adult where he basically looked like a healthy NBA player, not the deformed looking guy he became at the end. At that time he probably was 6'10" or so and not overweight for that height at all, the thing is he literally never stopped growing, doctors never expected him to live much past 40. For a while he kept getting taller and then just kept getting bigger, eventually becoming the 500 lb or whatever behometh he was at the end.

Posted by Eric | November 22, 2006 5:53 PM

No way there are anything close to eleven American blacks who are 7'+ in the NBA. In fact, Shaq is the only black American 7-footer in the NBA I can think of offhand. Most 7-footers in the NBA are Europeans, Asians, or American whites.

Posted by MQ | November 22, 2006 6:33 PM

The intreresting thing about natural basketball ability is that it is divided between people who seem to be the perfect physical specimens and people who are to use a crude term freaks. The best swingmen in the NBA are also some of the best all-around athletes in all of sports. On the other hand you have a lot of stiff who are in the NBA mainly because they are good at being tall.

"No way there are anything close to eleven American blacks who are 7'+ in the NBA."

I'm not sure of the exact number but it is surely in that neighborhood. American black seven-footers that I can think of:
Shaq, Jerome James, Tyson Chandler, Andrew Bynum, Brendan Haywood, and Patrick O'Bryant. There is one seven foot asian in the league, a few American whites and a few European whites. Most seven footers in the league are either American or non-American blacks. There aren't that many to begin with (between one and two per team), but blacks are a significant proportion of them.

Posted by Jeremiah J. | November 22, 2006 7:08 PM

NBA players listed at 7-0 or higher:
Jason Collins 7-0 (African American)
Mike Illic 7-1 (Yugoslavia)
Nenad Kristic 7-0 (Yugoslavia)
Stephen Hunter 7-0 (African American)
Martynas Andriuskevicius 7-2 (Russia)
Andrew Bogut 7-0 (Australia)
Ryan Hollins 7-0
Earl Barron 7-0 (African American)
Shaquille O'Neal 7-1 (African American)
Darko Milicic 7-0 (Yugoslavia)
Brendan Haywood 7-0 (African American)
DeSagana Diop 7-0 (Senegal)
DJ Mbenga 7-0 (Congo)
Dirk Nowitzki 7-0 (Germany)
Yao Ming 7-6 (China)
Dikembe Mutombo 7-2 (Zaire)
Pau Gasol 7-0 (Spain)
Jake Tsakalidis 7-2 (Georgia)
Tyson Chandler 7-1 (African American)
Francisco Elson 7-0 (Netherlands (of African decent))
Mark Blount 7-0 (African American)
Joel Przybilla 7-1 (White American)
Andreas Glyniadakis 7-1 (Greece)
Johan Petro 7-0 (France (of African decent))
Robert Swift 7-0 (White American)
Patrick O'Bryant 7-0 (African American)
Chris Kaman 7-0 (White American)
Zeljko Rebraca 7-0 (Yugoslavia)
Andrew Bynum 7-0 (African American)
Chris Mihm 7-0 (White American)
Sean Marks 7-0 (New Zealand)
Brad Miller 7-0 (White American)

So the big question of course is what is going on in Yugoslavia?

Posted by Rob | November 22, 2006 8:05 PM

But I believe most or all of these listed heights are with shoes.

I doubt there is even one black NBA player who is 7'+ barefoot.

Posted by ed johnson | November 22, 2006 8:15 PM

One question would be what is going on in Yugoslavia. Another would be what is going on in the central African plains (south Sudan, northeast Congo). Particularly as one imagines diet is superior in Yugoslavia to that in Africa.

Another question would be, what is up with that height researcher profiled in the New Yorker last year who claims population height averages are related solely to diet and health, not to genetics? Isn't that absurd on the face of it? There aren't a lot of 4-footers in Yugoslavia compensating for those 7-footers.

Posted by brooksfoe | November 22, 2006 8:15 PM

Yugoslavia, and the Balkans in general, are one of the world centers of tallness. The great physical anthropologist Carleton Coon's study of the Ghegs of North Albania is entitled "The Mountain of Giants." Jerry Pournelle told me that Crown Prince Leka, son of King Zog, pretender to the throne of Albania, whom Jerry worked with in the 1960s on a planned invasion of the Communist state, was seven feet tall:

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2006/08/colby-cosh-wants-to-know.html

The other European center of tallness was traditionally the Baltic countries, like Lithuania, which explains a lot about why Balkan and Baltic countries do so well in Olympic basketball.

Recently, the Dutch have been growing rapidly for reasons nobody quite understands -- similar peoples like the Danes don't seem to be growing as fast.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 22, 2006 8:18 PM

A very tall man is a regular rider on a train I occasionally take home from work. I've stood next to him on the platform a couple of times, and comparing him to my height of 5'10" my best guess is that he's maybe nine or ten inches taller, making him 6'7" or 6'8". The point is, he is also the tallest man I can ever recall seeing in person, outside a basketball game.

Posted by Peter | November 22, 2006 8:24 PM

Yeah, the shoes thing is part of it - all NBA players are listed at height w/shoes, whereas my impression is that most people in real life list their height barefoot (if I'm wrong, I'll start saying I'm 6'2" or 6'2.5"...), as well as the general propensity for NBA players to fudge their heights up. Sometimes it seems like everyone in the L is three inches shorter than they say they are. (I heard a story somewhere that Jabbar actually did the inverse, and is more like 7'4", so that he'd intimidate guys who never played him before - anyone else heard this one?)

And I suspect there's a lot of factors involved that, put together, reduce the importance of genetics: when I was in 7th grade in MA, in a class of mostly kids from Northern European stock, I was like 5'7" and the second or third tallest kid in the class; when I was in 8th grade in CA, in a class of mostly kids from Northern European stock, I was like 5'9" and not in the top ten. When I graduated from high school in CA, probably half the guys in my class were between 5'11" and 6'2"; when I arrived at college (UofChicago) I was at 6'1" probably back in the top quartile of height, if not the top quintile.

Posted by Quarterican | November 22, 2006 8:34 PM

> NBA players listed at 7-0 or higher:

Michael Jordan was listed at 6'-6" IIRC but having stood next to him he wasn't anywhere near that height, so I wouldn't go by the NBA program guide!

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | November 22, 2006 8:49 PM

Wow, sorry, didn't realize Bynum, Blount, and Hunter were 7'. Hadn't even heard of most of those other black 7-footers (except for Tyson Chandler). I guess it goes to show that the majority of 7-footers in the NBA are stiffs, whether they are white or black. The combination of athletic ability and extreme height is rare.

Posted by MQ | November 22, 2006 9:19 PM

I'm 6'4 1/8th (barefoot), so I have a pretty close-up perspective on how tall really tall guys are. Among pundits, the tallest I've met are Jim Pinkerton at 6'-9" and Karl Zinmeister at maybe an inch shorter. So, there are NBA-sized people out there in other professions, although not many.

Centers and forwards really are huge, and definitely stand out from the crowd. I can recall seeing about a half dozen famous ones on the street (Wilt, Rodman, Horace Grant, Mark Eaton, Walton, Ewing), all of them forwards or centers, compared to only one baseball player (Steve Garvey). In other words, it's easy to walk by, say, Robin Yount in a hotel without noticing who he is, but passing Patrick Ewing in a corridor is a memorable experience.

Although basketball players normally exaggerate their heights (Charles Barkley got himself listed at 6-7 for the draft), Bill Walton, although listed at 6-11, is probably even taller. He is certainly enormously taller than I am. I walked behind him down Rush St. in Chicago for a few blocks once, and his size (he has tremendously broad shoulders as well) had quite an impact on the people passing him in the opposite direction. Many of the young ladies, who probably had no idea who Walton was, did doubletakes and turned and stared at him after he went by.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 22, 2006 9:48 PM

"But I believe most or all of these listed heights are with shoes.

I doubt there is even one black NBA player who is 7'+ barefoot."

What's your point? If shoes add about an inch, according to the above list you only have 9 true seven footers, 2 of which are African Americans. If shoes add 2 inches you only have 3 true seven footers anyway--not enough to claim any kind of pattern (100% of all Yao Mings are Asian!). The fact remains that out of the 10% or so tallest people in the NBA, a whole bunch of them are black Americans.

Posted by Jeremiah J. | November 22, 2006 9:57 PM

Among pundits, the tallest I've met are Jim Pinkerton at 6'-9" and Karl Zinmeister at maybe an inch shorter.

Is Pinkerton really that tall? I was going to cite him as probably the tallest non-baskteball player I'd ever seen in person, but I would have estimated him at probably a couple of inches shorter than that.

Pundits are, of course, a pretty short race. As best I can tell, Richard Just is the tallest liberal pundit in DC (at maybe 6'4"), followed by yours truly. Hence, my hidden agenda in getting the Euston Manifesto crowd debarred from calling themselves "liberals" so I can claim the "tallest liberal pundit" title for myself. Admittedly, though, how you want to classify Steve Clemons (sort of a liberal, sort of a pundit) becomes a factor here.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | November 23, 2006 12:01 AM

KG is over 7' and he lists himself as under 6'11". I bet he's over 7' sans whatever brand of shoe he's hawking now.

Posted by crack | November 23, 2006 12:45 AM

BTW, 95 percentile beginning at 6'2" is no big deal. Do the math. It means in any random sample of 20 about one will be 6'2" or over.

Posted by Joe | November 23, 2006 1:52 AM

Recently, the Dutch have been growing rapidly for reasons nobody quite understands

Climate change. When those dykes give way before the rising seas, much of the Netherlands will be under six feet one inch of water. Logically, only those Dutch people who are six foot two or more will be able to survive and start the long, backbreaking process of rebuilding the flood defences and baling out the country with bucket chains.

The Dutch government, under direct orders from Her Netherlandic Majesty, have been embarking on a massive programme of eugenics. Short Dutch children are expelled into Belgium, to be replaced by tall kidnapped Danes. The plan is to raise the average height to six foot five by 2050. Thirty years into the plan, the Dutch are already the tallest nation in Europe.

(The wooden clog, incidentally, is an adaptation to previous floods. While it is, of course, far too small to serve as a flotation device, it is sturdy and heavy enough to anchor the average Dutchman or Dutchwoman in place, like the holdfast of a kelp plant, during the initial inflow of water after a dyke breach, thus preventing the population from being swept around the place in a disorderly and un-Dutch fashion.)

Posted by ajay | November 23, 2006 5:57 AM

Speaking of the Dutch,and tall athletes,here's 212cm (6 ft 11 in) tall K-1 kickboxing world champion,Semmy Schilt.He's one of the rare super-tall athletes who's actually quite agile in the ring.Needless to say,the guy's a walking terror.

Posted by Jussi Hämäläinen | November 23, 2006 6:50 AM

Climate change. When those dykes give way before the rising seas

Figures ... I'll bet gay men wouldn't turn and run :)

Speaking of the Dutch,and tall athletes,here's 212cm (6 ft 11 in) tall K-1 kickboxing world champion,Semmy Schilt.He's one of the rare super-tall athletes who's actually quite agile in the ring.Needless to say,the guy's a walking terror.

In contrast, 7'0" heavyweight boxing champion Nicolai Valuev is not particularly agile, but so far has been able to use his sheer size to dominate opponents. He's been helped by the generally weak level of competition in the heavyweight division in recent years.

Posted by Peter | November 23, 2006 12:11 PM

Check out these two links for a good discussion of the last NBA draft:

http://www.draftexpress.com/viewarticle.php?a=1348
http://www.draftexpress.com/viewarticle.php?a=1349

NBA heights are listed with shoes and the standard seems to be a 1.25" boost.

I suspect modern heights might not correlate well with historical heights. I met Mike Newlin of the Rockets after playing against his older brothers in a Houston city rec league in '74. He was a lot taller than I was and I would have been a legit 6'4 by current NBA standards. He is listed at 6'4" in his NBA bio.

Posted by nat | November 23, 2006 8:50 PM

I figured I would check the links against current NBA listings and found the LaMarcus Aldridge is listed at his height without shoes, Brandon Roy essentially is listed at the shoe height and Adam Morrison is listed at a bit more than shoe height. I would guess the true heights of NBA-listed 7 footers are subject to similar variations.

Posted by Nat | November 23, 2006 9:10 PM

I recall reading that the massive increase in Dutch height correlates with government programs that encouraged pregnant women to consume lots of milk and cheese.

Posted by Savage | November 24, 2006 3:05 AM

From the list above, Andriuskevicius is Lithuanian, not Russian. Hence also part of the Baltic/Balkan Axis of Hoopage.

Does anyone here know if the Lithuanian national team wore tie-dye jerseys any time other than the '92 Olympics?

Posted by Doug | November 24, 2006 8:24 AM

I read somewhere that the practical limit of human height is about 8 feet, because if people were taller than that, the human skull could not survive the impact of an ordinary fall.

Posted by CJColucci | November 24, 2006 11:57 AM