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Python Scripting and Analyzing Your Way To Love

Posted by Unknown on from the you-might-be-overanalyzing-things-if dept.

fiannaFailMan writes "Wired reports one mathematician's mission to find love online by data mining from OK Cupid and applying mathematical modeling to optimize his profile(s). His methods included using 'Python scripts to riffle through hundreds of OkCupid survey questions. He then sorted female daters into seven clusters, like "Diverse" and "Mindful," each with distinct characteristics.' But the real work began when he started going on dates."

6 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Translation by OffTheLip · · Score: 5, Funny

    Slashdotter has vivid coding dream in Mom's basement and find love.

  2. I searched for "Looking for fat nerd programmer" by TWiTfan · · Score: 5, Funny

    So far no results for me. They all seem to want "rich, handsome guy who loves to travel."

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  3. Re:Hooray for Python by MtHuurne · · Score: 5, Funny

    Have you tried "from __future__ import antigravity"?

  4. Re:TED talk by i+kan+reed · · Score: 5, Interesting

    TED is now basically full of pseudoscientific bullshit and ego-fueled self-promoters.

  5. Guy is foolish. by gurps_npc · · Score: 5, Insightful
    He did three things.

    1) Categorize women into 7 categories. That looks to me to be valuable, but the article did not discuss all 7 categories. It ignored the only interesting thing this guy did!

    2) Set up multiple profiles and use machines to initiate action with thousands of potential women.

    3) Went on hundreds of dates in a relatively short amount of time.

    His 'success' was statistically insignificant AND totally unrelated to his math. Anyone that goes on hundreds of dates and find the right woman.

    You want to impress me? Have the algorithm pick 5 women and have them all be very interested in you. Picking 100's of women with lots of failed dates is just a NORMAL DATING LIFE.

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  6. Analysis? More targetted scattergunning by Mr_Silver · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whilst what he did was very clever, at the end of the day he manipulated the scoring so that his profile was placed in front of thousands of womens search results because it had a high match percentage (that normally would never have been seen).

    The TL;DR version of this story is that if thousands of women see your profile and, at the same time, are told by a website that you're a high match to them, then you've got a very good chance they'll contact you. Which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

    That, to me, is the digital equivalent of (the old advice) that you'll never meet someone unless you get yourself out there.

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