How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love • Hacker News Board

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#161

Post by ajays » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 3:05 PM UTC

I've dated around on OKC since the early days. His lack of success on first dates points to a problem with him; maybe he was too picky or had some other issues which turned women off. If he was looking for that Hollywood-style instant spark, he was mistaken; that doesn't always happen.

When I was on OKC, about 1 in 20 messages would result in a first date; but you bet that more than 50% of first dates turned into second dates.

When women first meet you, it's almost like they're going through a checklist in their heads: is this guy a creep? A rapist? A jerk? etc. etc. (this is just the impression I got). If you don't trigger any of the alerts, you're golden.

One of the biggest mistakes nerds (like myself) make on their profiles and on dates is that we try to impress the woman with our encyclopedic knowledge of some esoteric subject. That's a sure turnoff.

Maybe we should have an "ask HN" on dating ... :-)

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#162

Post by normloman » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 3:09 PM UTC

qq66 wrote: post #132

nostrademons wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between dating someone specifically because she's Cambodian and dating someone who happens to be Cambodian. If I read the GP right, he's talking about the latter.

Is there anything actually wrong with dating specifically because they're Cambodian? Anymore than dating someone specifically because they have a certain body type, or certain hair color, or certain sports team affiliation?

Limiting your dating pool to just Cambodians is just as stupid as limiting the pool to just blondes or just Yankees fans. Because in the long run, these things don't matter. Unless you're a special little snowflake who just can bare to sleep with a Mets fan.

I can see body type making a difference, because it's important to find your mate attractive. But even then, don't harp on it too much. I know a guy who refuses to date any girl who isn't a size zero. Unsurprisingly he gets no dates. If he just gave other girls a chance, he might discover that he's attracted to a wider variety of body types than he thinks he is.

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#163

Post by sjs382 » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 3:46 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #28

It's funny... doing all this 'hacking' to create profiles with awesome match %'s... is pretty pointless. In my personal experience, a match below 80% is a red flag (serious incompatibilities), but above 85% there aren't any big differences. Like he said, he went on 55 dates, but only three second dates. The 55 dates really isn't too hard to do without the hacking, it's just a question of time. And the "three second d…

4 years ago, I met my fiance on OkCupid. Our percentages were: 11% Enemy, 71% Friend, 69% Match

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#164

Post by CodeCube » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 4:29 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #28

It's funny... doing all this 'hacking' to create profiles with awesome match %'s... is pretty pointless. In my personal experience, a match below 80% is a red flag (serious incompatibilities), but above 85% there aren't any big differences. Like he said, he went on 55 dates, but only three second dates. The 55 dates really isn't too hard to do without the hacking, it's just a question of time. And the "three second d…

aww, I miss OKTrends :(

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#165

Post by ptr » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 4:38 PM UTC

keerthiko wrote: post #61

crazygringo wrote: post #28

It's funny... doing all this 'hacking' to create profiles with awesome match %'s... is pretty pointless. In my personal experience, a match below 80% is a red flag (serious incompatibilities), but above 85% there aren't any big differences. Like he said, he went on 55 dates, but only three second dates. The 55 dates really isn't too hard to do without the hacking, it's just a question of time. And the "three second d…

I spent about one year on OkC @ approx 40minutes/day on the site, and got about 20 first dates, 10 second dates, 2 third dates, and 2 fourth dates. They were almost all 85+% matches, and weren't that hard to find. However, I would say that my manual filtering probably took way less time than he spent implementing his models. He probably learned more engineering and advanced math while I learned how to read subtle mes…

A thing I've been thinking about: you're not supposed to be "eager", at least not apparently eager, but still go on 50+ dates with random people? How do you make it not feel like work? I think I'd get depressed, sadly. In my mind, meeting someone should be all casual. But what do I know. I like the persistency though.

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#166

Post by gadders » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 5:18 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #66

DannyBee wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but this is just bullshit. It's what guys tell themselves because they can't write reasonable profiles or write non-creepy messages to women. I've read what most guys send my female friends on okcupid. Not just the random idiots, but what i would think would be otherwise intelligent people. It often comes off as desperate or creepy. It's certainly true that it helps to be attractive. But I'm an average looking…

> I've summarized the average guy profile here: http://www.okcupid.com/profile/RegularOKCGuy?disable_mobile=... . Annoyingly enough very similar to my profile! :P But yeah. I have a good job, I go to the gym and workout, what the heck else am I expected to do? I'm working my ass off to make a positive impact on the world. Fuck if I am going to drop that so I can be a narcissistic asshole, quit my job, and fly around…

To me that comes across as trying too hard.

DISCLAIMER: IANAW

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#167

Post by ben010783 » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 5:22 PM UTC

> McKinlay had popped up in her search for 6-foot guys with blue eyes near UCLA...

I find it interesting that he did so much analysis based on interests, beliefs, etc. and he ended up getting messaged because of a search that was pretty superficial.

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#168

Post by cdcarter » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 5:26 PM UTC

Tossrock wrote: post #67

fchollet wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought that the messaging asymmetry on dating sites was purely a reflection of the real-world asymmetry of dating, where females will almost never initiate a flirt sequence themselves. The universal expectation is that it is the role of the male to manifest interest in, and worthiness of, the female. Not that I agree with this, but it would be difficult not to observe it. I remember reading somewhere that t…

OKCupid's demographics skew male nearly 2:1, actually [1]. 1: https://www.quantcast.com/okcupid.com#!demo

That being said, OkCupid has a HUGE male-seeking-male population (from anecdotal evidence, larger than it's women-seeking-women population).

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#169

Post by marincounty » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 5:31 PM UTC

I couldn't imagine 55 "What do you do?"--Ugh. I look back at all the women whom I would drop everything for and marry, and there was just one; I met her on fourth street, and regret not saying yes to a request in 2007. She had beautiful green eyes and dirty cuticles(don't ask). I hope you are doing well, and I have always felt bad for not doing more(I did refer to Mills Street). I couldn't do more because I was a pussy at the time. I still think about you and hope you are doing well. She was beautiful on the outside and inside. She was not jaded, and seemed like her own version of "Zooey and Fran" with Sylvia Plath mixed in?

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#170

Post by xixi77 » Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 5:32 PM UTC

asnyder wrote: post #9

This is a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7098563 Also, here's my .02 re-posted from the comments section: Rather than answer the questions that were important to him he decided to find a set of people he thought he would like then only answer the questions they care about, and not even the way he would naturally answer them, rather he used an algorithm to determine the weight that would be best to…

What's wrong with managing questions? Sure, there are maybe 5-10 questions I would actually care about, and 10-20 questions that might be somewhat helpful to define my personality, but the rest are quite optional.

And when you don't care much, you can near-randomly pick an answer that turns out to be disliked by someone, and turn noise into a negative signal. So why answer that at all?