A Quantitative Analysis of Online Dating 283
imjustatomato writes "Never before has something so human and primitive as dating been reducible to such discrete values. A study analyzes the data of an online dating service. When do you like someone like yourself? Among online dating members, "marital status" and "wants children" are the two most influential characteristics to match. Other interesting findings are: men initiate 73.3% of messages, but their initiations are 17.9% less likely to be reciprocated; 78.2% of messages are never responded to."
how I met my wife (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:how I met my wife (Score:4, Funny)
That's odd... (Score:5, Funny)
"Quantitative analysis" (Score:3, Funny)
Please date me!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Please resond this time HotWifeWannabe1337!!, you dident seem to get my first 26 messages...
-- Anoymous Coward
RTFA? (Score:5, Informative)
Anyhow, none of the numbers seem all that surprising, except that 55% of active members are women (63% of all members were men).
Re:RTFA? (Score:4, Interesting)
> (63% of all members were men).
"Members" are anyone who'se ever signed on for an account and not deleted it. They keep the numbers looking good by continuing to carry these. Not surprising, ISPs have done this for a long time. Men don't remain active members because they get so little response (ref. the original paper).
Women remain active more because they tend to keep coming back to the chat rooms, mostly with other women. They hang around just in case a guy comes along to try to chat with them. Then they'll all play hot chat with him, and afterwards fail to respond to him at about the same rate as in email.
I've been doing some research of my own. But I don't see anything surprising enough about it that makes it worth writing about. It's the same sort of behaviors I've seen since the time when BBSs started gaining general public members, prior to the spread of internet connection turning them into ISPs. I'm not surprised by the fact the article is new and the paper is 2 years old. I'm surprised that someone bothered to write a paper about something that's been going on for 15 years. On the other hand, it was a master's thesis. Very few academics care what master's students write about as long as the research is done halfway decent.
Members... (Score:4, Funny)
That is just plain wrong. Members (Latin name: Phallus Maximus) are sentient symbiont life-forms that human males carry between their legs. The member is connected to the brain of the human male and takes over control of the brain and thus the entire body whenever a human female is present manipulating the human male into to doing and saying idiotic things he would otherwise never dream of. Members, and the effect they have upon the behavior, utterances and personality of the human male can be quite annoying but unfortunately they can also not be eradicated since they are essential to the procreation of the species. Research into alternative technologies such as cloning is ongoing.
That chat room you speak of... (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.tshirthell.com/images/contestpics/a249
and this chick
http://www.tshirthell.com/images/contestpics/a249
the reason they didn't write back was they already finished spanking it for that evening...
Re:RTFA? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever recieve a flirt/wink from another rather attractive member, only to find he/she doesn't reply back when you message them? Or how about receiving large numbers of flirts/winks in a very short period of time when your member profile contains close to no information?
Do a test yourself. go to www.mate1.com, make a profile, but profile no personal infomation about yourself. wait a week and see what happens. odds are you'll be messaged by about 15 people who are all supposedly interested in you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:RTFA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Online dating (Score:3, Interesting)
LK
Re:Online dating (Score:5, Funny)
That'd be the one you married then?
double entendre (Score:5, Funny)
Uhh, yeah. I'm going to guess that the phrase "wants children" means something different, depending on whether you're on a dating site, or on alt.sex.lolita. Yes?
Religion and Smoking (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, there is one obvious characteristic where opposites do attract. At least for some 90% of the population...
Re: (Score:2)
Don't be so sure. As an atheist, there's no way I want the mother of my children passing any superstitious nonsense on to our kids.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. It pretty much ended a year and a half relationship when we started talking about stuff like that. The truly mind-boggling thing is, she said she was an atheist all along. I had my suspicions before, but when she freaked and it became a two-hour argument because I said I would discourage my kids from attending a Christian youth camp (read: attempted brainwashing session) I finally admitted she was a closet Christian. After that, well, it's hard to respect someone.
How weird is that? Who lies about thei
Re: (Score:2)
That does seem really weird. Is it hip to be atheist these days?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The cognitive dissonance that occurs when you get laughed at by somebody who believes in magic just isn't worth it.
Let me open by saying that this line was hysterical. However, as a devout agnostic [reference.com] I would like to point out a fallacy that atheists often fall victim to: how do you know that "god/es/s" are simply "magic"?
Sticking to the facts: at some point, all living things die. Perhaps we then find ourselves surrounded by virgins, standing before pearly gates, or we simply cease to exist. However, h
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Good thing, too. Her heart surgery was two years ago. Had she kept on smoking, it might have been a heart attack...
This surprises me not one bit. (Score:5, Insightful)
- Communication. Email (and other text-based mediums) miss out on several communication cues. Tone of voice, body language, etc. are important to figure out exactly what is meant. I can write something and mean it in one way, but that doesn't mean the person at the other end will read it that way - they could just as easily (especially if they're having a bad day) cast it in a negative tone in their mind.
- Expectations. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to find out that men (and women!) online are looking for the "perfect partner". Newsflash, people: there's no such thing. Everybody has their flaws. Doesn't matter who they are.
- Appearances (which comes in with expectations, I suppose.) If you're not 'beautiful', you're evidently not worth knowing. Dig a little deeper, people. There's more to beauty than stick figures like you see in those fashion magazines
...
My experiences with online dating? I've met five, maybe six, people that way. One's a decent friend still. One, it's too early to tell (but my feeling is "nothing more than friendship".) The rest, I haven't seen much of beyond the early meetings.All in all, my Quest for Non Single Status shall henceforth be conducted off the computer. Between the cost, the frustration of usually never getting a message back (I'd rather hear "thanks, but I don't think it'd work out" than never hear back at all - at least then it's a clean break), and generally getting out and about in the real world a bit more than when I was a teenager, I think I'll be much happier for it. Do I need somebody? Hell no. Do I want somebody? Yes. But I'd rather be single than with the wrong person.
Re:This surprises me not one bit. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if that was made clear to paying members, before you send them. Or before you join.
I was similarly disappointed when I tried out the system of eHarmony a year ago. I could understand not being able to initiate communications until becoming a paying member, but I was very surprised that I couldn't communicate back. Someone who could initiate with me would have to be a paying member. But to me this lessens the value of membership. Esp. if
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
On OKC, I think all of my messages except one have received a response, and most of those responses from single women within my geographical range were receptive to the idea of meeting up for a date. I'm sure the fact that the site is free helps a lot in that regar
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In all seriousness, True is a huge scam as a quick google will reveal. In fact, the only reason it is profitable is that it made money before all the bad reviews came out, and dump
Why OKCupid is the Best and Geekiest Site (Score:3)
Most dating sites have a small (fixed) number of variables you can set, such as "wants kids" and "smokes." Say there's 10 variables with 4 values each. That's 2^20 possible distinct people (1 megaperson) on the site.
OKCupid does that too. But then OKCupid lets users create additional variables for study (over 2000 at this point) with two to four possible values. So there's mo
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But th
Re:This surprises me not one bit. (Score:5, Funny)
I though that once upon a time. Then I realized I wasn't ugly and have been shallow and self gratifying ever since. It works for me.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
On the dating sites I've been on, women definitely have the advantage here. I have never had to pay for an account, because I get enough interesting guys contacting me. I try to reply to every guy, including when it's negative. I think a lot of people don't delete their accounts after they're done and that could cause a lot of non-replies. It can be a pain though if you find someone, delete your account, then break-up and have to re
women's advantage (Score:3, Insightful)
But the other important factor is compromise. All women want a "self-confidence" guy above all else (your g
my observation (Score:5, Insightful)
You really have a hard time weeding through the mass amounts of spam email (I realize you are looking for someone in Virginia, but Montana is only 6 hours away), the obvious scammers mostly with
Also there are a fair amount of women that fall into the FREAK category.
I would disagree with this point made in the paper "Among online dating members, "marital status" and "wants children" are the two most influential characteristics to match."
From my limited experience on Match, I think the most important thing women were looking for was income range. I initially had that on my profile and got swamped with replies, after hiding that bit they slowed way down.
Women love a man with a huge... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Women love a man with a huge... (Score:5, Funny)
--
BMO
Re: (Score:2)
No, we love women with huge tits. What?! Its not like we dodge around these things like women do! Least we're honest about the fact that we would be perfectly happy staring at her tits all day.
Re:Women love a man with a huge... (Score:4, Funny)
and men love a woman.... (Score:3, Informative)
from grandparent post:
From my limited experience on Match, I think the most important thing women were looking for was income range. I initially had that on my profile and got swamped with replies, after hiding that bit they slowed way down.
As a woman I can make a reciprocol evaluation: From my experience, the most important thing men were looking for was looks. I initially had a photo up and got swamped with replies, after removing the photo they slowed way down.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Never heard of OKCupid.com
Re:my observation (Score:5, Informative)
Too many women (and probably men) are putting up unrealistically flattering photos, which means an unpleasant suprise in person. My wife unintentionally put up fairly unflattering photos and when I saw her in person, I had to check the room again, as I was so pleasantly suprised. I told her that her photos didn't do her justice and that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
Just remember that dating websites only kinda solve one part of the problem. They get you introductions to people you would never otherwise meet. If they're honest on their profile, you also get some early answers to important questions, but there are no guarantees there. You're still going to have to go through all of the work of really seeing if the relationship makes sense and then putting in the work to build that relationship into something significant, with all of the joys and difficulties that will bring.
As for the income thing, match equates "don't want to answer" with "less than $25k/year". My wife didn't want to date the unemployed and put "at least $25k/year" as a filter and only saw me because I had recently made my income visible. So my wife wasn't being a gold-digger, but wouldn't have seen me if I hadn't put my income out there. Match.com's decision-making on this question is particularly questionable.
Regards,
Ross
Re: (Score:2)
As for the income thing, match equates "don't want to answer" with "less than $25k/year".
That makes sense, because if people are actually concerned with money and you list "don't want to answer", then why should they have to waste their time with your profile? Many people have said wading through the crap is part of the problem. It is true that you may have never met your wife if you had listed "dwta" from the start, but that could happen to anyone. Maybe you saw a woman in 2002 while waiting in line so
Oblig. (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite surprised here (Score:5, Funny)
And from the other side of the equation, no sensible female of the species will choose to date a geek that is clearly ill-adapted socially, is not likely to resemble a movie star from her wall poster, and probably will not fare well in the salary department if he ever manages to leave his basement (many choose not to.)
And with respect to children, many men dislike children and don't want them at all. They are expensive to maintain, and pointless to raise in the first place. The society changed so much in the last 100-200 years that a large family that was a great advantage to a peasant is now a death warrant in many professional areas, financially and time-wise. Parents nowadays are expected to sink up to a million dollars into a child, with no ROI whatsoever. The parents become slaves to their children, working most of their productive life to maintain the family.
Re:Not quite surprised here (Score:4, Funny)
I give that one +1 Jaded as Fuck.
Re:Not quite surprised here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's only when you bring emotion into the equation that some find that having children serves a purpose.
Re:Not quite surprised here (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can say that, then you can say there's no logical reason to have sex or play baseball or create wealth. Some people want kids, others don't. There's no logic there. There's logic in not having them if you can't afford them, but that's pretty much it, I think.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, there's the enlightened self-interest angle; if *no-one* has kids, then the economy collapses as the workforce hits retirement age en masse. Now of course everyone isn't going to just stop having kids, but recently in the UK there have been rumblings about the generally increasing age of the
Re:Not quite surprised here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not quite surprised here (Score:4, Funny)
ROI for children is offset against pension deficit (Score:2)
(The first thing was "Already? I haven't finished paying off the wedding yet." and the second thing was "Yay! I love children and I've always wanted to be a dad!")
In pure financial terms, the ROI for children is that, hopefully, they look after you in your old age. Now I know that is a hopefully, but given the pension c
Re: (Score:2)
And BTW, I have 3 kids. There's a BIG emotional ROI every day, if you care to open your eyes. To those who think that emotional ROI and monetary/professional ROI are not linked both ways - well, maybe you don't know everything yet.
Re: (Score:2)
parent post is -8, flame bait (Score:2)
-1, hypocrisy - posting on slashdot
-3, 3 counts of bigotry, one against geeks, one against people who want kids, one against kids, period.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
What kids may turn out to be good for (Score:3, Insightful)
Those with no kids often have nobody, who
- looks after their well being (nurses and doctors are often overworked and do not notice health problems until it is too late)
- visits them regularly. You can immediately spot people who haven't seen friends or relatives in a long time, they are of
Geographical distance (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Geographical distance (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"Socially acceptable" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
We prefer the term drunkards... then we don't have to go to meetings...
Well... besides the strong desire to go to the Lost Weekend [drunkard.com]...
Nephilium
Drink heightens feeling. When I drink, it heightens my emotions and I put it in a story. -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, American author
Re: (Score:2)
-matthew
okcupid (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've found success/insanity on okcupid as well.
She's a hairdresser, runs ubuntu, and is getting FiOS installed next week. She also doesn't care that I work insane hours, have an on-call schedule, am in CA a few weeks a month, and tend to be antisocial to just about everyone.
She even had t-shirts from thinkgeek from before we started dating.
Unfortunately, before her, I met a total whack job who after getting in a nasty fight with, threw razor blades at me while I was asleep (to prevent her from cutting
Re:okcupid (Score:4, Informative)
I've found the free sites generally better than the pay sites, too. Never met anyone from okcupid, but I met my current g/f on PlentyOfFish [plentyoffish.com], and met a previous g/f there as well.
In about three years of online dating I've observed that:
1) Almost everyone lies, generally about age, appearance and relationship history. Lieing about appearance is the one that I haven't been able to make sense of. I've observed it myself in women, and according to many women I've dated lots of men do it too. One women described a guy she met as being, relative to his online picture, like the "before and after" of some terrible and ravaging disease. Lieing is a showstopper for me, so I have tended to drop a lot of women gently after a first meeting.
2) Even on the really skanky sites, women are either looking for a relationship or are really messed up. I've never dated anyone from such sites, but poked around out of curiousity. Really.
3) Free sites are better than pay sites. Lavalife is the best pay site I've used.
4) Different sites have different geographic representations. I live in a small town, and some sites have far more women in my area than others. I have no idea why.
5) By far the best strategy is to "meet early, meet often." After a couple of e-mail exchanges I ask if she wants to meet for coffee somewhere. If not, that's the end of it--life is too short to waste time on electronic interaction when five minutes face-to-face will tell you more than five months online.
Overall, online dating is a very good thing if people go into with reasonable expectations and treat it as an introduction service rather than a magic filter that will find them "the One" without any hard relationship-building work on their part.
Re: (Score:2)
Depends where you are located (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
-matthew
Primitive? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's 'primitive' about dating? You think they have or had 'dating' in primitive societies? Modern Western culture, and those parts of the rest of the world that have been globalized into it, are the only places we find this custom. They didn't 'date' in Europe/America in the 1900s, and they don't 'date' in most of the world now, except for that internationalized overclass that you get in big cities.
They have lots of sex, but that's a whole nuther thing.
Enjoy the sophisticated, rarefied culture that allows you to have such esoteric customs as dating! But don't think it's a basic primitive instinctive thing, because it's about as natural to human culture as the iPod.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Objects (Score:4, Funny)
Done before (Score:3, Informative)
Qualities in a woman (Score:5, Funny)
In college I dated a passionate girl, but she was too emotional. Everything was an emergency; she was a drama queen, cried all the time and threatened suicide. So I decided I needed a girl with stability.
When I was 25 I found a very stable girl but she was boring. She was totally predictable and never got excited about anything. Life became so dull that I decided that I needed a girl with some excitement.
When I was 28 I found an exciting girl, but I couldn't keep up with her. She rushed from one thing to another, never settling on anything. She did mad impetuous things and made me miserable as often as happy. She was great fun initially and very energetic, but directionless. So I decided to find a girl with some real ambition.
When I turned 31, I found a smart ambitious girl with her feet planted firmly on the ground and married her. She was so ambitious that she divorced me and took everything I owned.
Now, I am older and wiser, and am looking for a girl with big tits.
Re: (Score:2)
If you are lucky enough to marry one, you can play with them as much as you want unless she has PMS.
I do my best to play with and worship them (and her) every wonderful day.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Top Criteria (Score:4, Interesting)
Want responses? Try a fee-based service (Score:2, Informative)
I had quite a bit of luck when I was using a fee-based service: had a steady flow of dates, dated for several months on a few occasions, and met my present girlfriend. With the fee-based service, you had to buy credits to send messages (instant or mail) but 'smiles' were free. You'd log in and either find responses to the few emails you sent out the day before or at least a couple of new 'smiles' to pursue. It was easy-peasy.
When I tried a free site, my response rate dropped to about 1% compared to abo
Ignore the blog -- go to the souce (Score:2)
The blog entry just cherry picks some data from Master's thesis work done by Andrew Fiore at MIT (he is now at Berkeley). His online dating research papers can be found here [berkeley.edu].
Fiore's thesis [berkeley.edu] is a much more interesting read then the blog entry .
Re:Interesting article but talk about padding... (Score:5, Insightful)
A thesis doesn't have to be long in order to contain good research. My doctoral thesis is only 81 pages, and 20 pages of that is overhead (front matter, table of contents, list of symbols, preface, advice to the reader concerning the order in which chapters should be read, epilogue, and references).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, that's probably a fairly accurate assessment. The third chapter of my thesis essentially says "here's a problem which several people think requires exponential time to solve. Here's a linear-time algorithm for solving it."
Re: (Score:2)
Length is nev
References are not padding... (Score:2)
References are not padding. They serve the important purpose of showing that you are aware of previous research in the same area, showing where your research fits into the body of knowledge, and making it more obvious what new stuff you discovered in your research.
Re: (Score:2)
No. That's whan an Introduction is for. References exist so that future readers can find the material to which you are referring if they want more details.
That's simple: Anything which isn't in the Introduction is my own research. Don't s
Re: (Score:2)
That would make quite a long introduction in some subject areas.
In France, introduction is just for introducing what you are trying to show in your paper, for defining the subject area, etc.
The "state of the art" chapter comes right after it (... and actual reference list is at the end...). Then, at the 3rd chapter, you start presenting your own research.
Don't students have to sign a paper saying "this thesis is my own work" at your institution?
As long as you ma
Re: (Score:2)
The "state of the art" chapter comes right after it (... and actual reference list is at the end...). Then, at the 3rd chapter, you start presenting your own research.
Ok, so my "introduction" is your "introduction + state of the art"; and instead of having one (or two) chapters at the start of my thesis, I had a section at the start of each chapter.
Either way, I think it's re
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The order is quite simple: First I present a new algorithm; then I present two applications of it. It would be absurd to present the material in any other order.
The fact that the first chapter draws upon some very difficult material and is easier to understand having first read and understood how the algorithm will be applied is a good reason for recommending that the chapters be read out-of-order; but it wouldn't justify using a theo
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, I'm a coward.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
An important part of research is to first be aware of the existing body of knowledge, in order to avoid duplicating work done elsewhere, or, worse, of coming to conclusions debunked elsewhere.
Most papers have a part called "state of the art" whose purpose is to reference previous work done in the area.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The idea of doing a phd that had involved just learning the current state of the art didn't appeal at first, but they get you educated to the required level, and they're easier.
Doing original work is painful, stessful, and frankly scares the shit out of you at times. I'm lucky (well, I worked my ass off), I managed to acheive my stated goals. A 'book report' thesis, as you describe it is still hard, but you at least know it can be