While I sleep, someone is busy signing me up for newsletters – to an email account that I never use to sign up for things but is the same account that was being phished.
I think they were trying to insult me but I used to enjoy this particular newsletter some years ago even though I am a nerd and not a geek… I took the test and the results corroborate that fact. In all honesty, I’m a cross between the two so being called a geek and being signed-up to anything that falls under either category, is ‘A-okay’ with me!
Read more on the subject “Are you a geek or a nerd” by Laurie Vazquez for BigThink.com
The words “nerd” and “geek” are often used interchangeably, as if they mean the same thing. They actually don’t:
- geek – An enthusiast of a particular topic or field. Geeks are “collection” oriented, gathering facts and mementos related to their subject of interest. They are obsessed with the newest, coolest, trendiest things that their subject has to offer.
- nerd – A studious intellectual, although again of a particular topic or field. Nerds are “achievement” oriented, and focus their efforts on acquiring knowledge and skill over trivia and memorabilia.
Orange words are geeky. Blue ones are nerdy. The words on the vertical axis become more geeky as you go up, and the words on the horizontal axis become more nerdy as you move right. Slackpropagation continues: “Words along the diagonal are similarly geeky and nerdy, including social (“#awkward”, “weirdo”), mainstream tech (“#computers”, “#microsoft”), and sci-fi/fantasy terms (“doctorwho,” “#thehobbit”).” Other observations from the data include:
- Collections are geeky: All derivatives of the word “collect” (“collection,” “collectables”, etc.) are orange. As are “boxset” and “#original,” which imply a taste for completeness and authenticity.
- Academic fields are nerdy: “math”, “#history,” “physics,” “biology,” “neuroscience,” “biochemistry,” etc. Other academic words (“thesis”, “#studymode”) and institutions (“harvard”, “oxford”) are also blue.
- The science & technology words differ: General terms (“#computers,” “#bigdata”) are on the diagonal — similarly geeky and nerdy. As you splay up toward more geeky, though, you see products, startups, brands, and more cultish technologies (“#apple”, “#linux”). As you splay down toward more nerdy you see more methodologies (“calculus”).
- Hobbies: compare the more geeky pastimes (“#toys,” “#manga”) with the more nerdy ones (“chess,” “sudoku”).
- Brains: the word “intelligence” may be geeky, but “education,” “intellectual,” and “#smartypants” are nerdy.
- Reading: “#books” are nerdy, but “ebooks” and “ibooks” are geeky.
- Pop culture vs. high culture: “#shiny” and “#trendy” are super-geeky, but (curiously) “cellist” is the nerdiest…
If you’d like another perspective, check out this infographic from Diego Martinez-Moncada at Daily Infographic. The dataset is different from Slackpropagation’s, but it comes from the same 2012 time period – and draws the same conclusions:
Read the original article on BigThink.com
