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OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment

jonmillward.com

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Re: OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment

#31

Post by dalore »

nostrademons wrote: post #12
jsnk wrote: post #3

>The fact that the first stage of online dating is so heavily stacked in women’s favour doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s any easier for them, compared to men, to reach the end goal of pure love or perfect sex. Of course, men have it harder than women in the mating game. This conclusion seems like a white lie the author created for women. No one is looking for perfect mate. Both men and women choose their partners f…

You're familiar with the Stable Marriage Algorithm, right? The math doesn't bear you out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem It's been proven that the algorithm is optimal for the initiators of proposals, i.e. men in contemporary Western culture, although women can hack this by asking guys out themselves. The confusion is because you've artificially restricted the universe to a subset of its true si…

Problem is that the stable marriage problem assumes that the number of women and men are the same which is clearly not the case for online dating. So yes the women's pool is larger by the fact there are more men on the site. Some of your assumptions are faulty. Just because a woman receives 20x more messages then men, doesn't mean men are sending 20x more messages. Say there are 5x more men on the site to begin with, then they are only sending 4x more messages.

I agree with your theory that women messaging men doesn't hurt but helps their chances.

Re: OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment

#32

Post by dalore »

richardv wrote: post #9

Curious as to why you tried to control the experiment as much as you could, but then decided to move all of the profiles into different cities? They should of been located in the same city. How do we not know that LA girls and guys are more loose, and Boston women don't even use online dating.

Problem is that the profiles in the same city would all show up as similar users with similar names and with the profiles matching exactly. People would easily tell that they are fake and not send any message.

Re: OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment

#33

Post by ashconnor »

jacques_chester wrote: post #25
pja wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the reverse experience, try signing up a fake profile to Travel Girls (or any of the other similar sites). A new male profile will get pinged within minutes.

So if I'm prepared to directly pay a woman, I can get company? I kinda sorta already knew that.

But you pay in air tickets and hotel rooms.

It's not an escort site...honest.

Re: OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment

#34

Post by yummyfajitas »

nostrademons wrote: post #12
jsnk wrote: post #3

>The fact that the first stage of online dating is so heavily stacked in women’s favour doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s any easier for them, compared to men, to reach the end goal of pure love or perfect sex. Of course, men have it harder than women in the mating game. This conclusion seems like a white lie the author created for women. No one is looking for perfect mate. Both men and women choose their partners f…

You're familiar with the Stable Marriage Algorithm, right? The math doesn't bear you out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem It's been proven that the algorithm is optimal for the initiators of proposals, i.e. men in contemporary Western culture, although women can hack this by asking guys out themselves. The confusion is because you've artificially restricted the universe to a subset of its true si…

You are misinterpreting the stable marriage problem. Among other things, the stable marriage algorithm guarantees that at each discrete time instant, each man and each woman is engaged to someone.

Reality doesn't have this constraint.

Re: OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment

#35

Post by LinXitoW »

jacques_chester wrote: post #11

I don't know if any of this strikes me as particularly new. Every new female account on any dating site gets absolutely hammered with messages in the first few hours. What's missing from a lot of discussions is simple supply and demand. I was on OKCupid for a few weeks and paid the $10 for the creepy stalker upgrade. Out of curiosity I started comparing male and female profiles in my city. In Perth, Australia, for pr…

The question then becomes: Why are more men than women actively looking for partners?

Re: OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment

#36

Post by jacques_chester »

LinXitoW wrote: post #35
jacques_chester wrote: post #11

I don't know if any of this strikes me as particularly new. Every new female account on any dating site gets absolutely hammered with messages in the first few hours. What's missing from a lot of discussions is simple supply and demand. I was on OKCupid for a few weeks and paid the $10 for the creepy stalker upgrade. Out of curiosity I started comparing male and female profiles in my city. In Perth, Australia, for pr…

The question then becomes: Why are more men than women actively looking for partners?

There's a bunch of wild hypothesising about why men use these sites more than women. For example:

"Men are more promiscuous, so will be on these sites even if they're already in a relationship"

or

"Women are ashamed to be a on a dating website"

But so far as I am aware, nobody knows.

Re: OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment

#37

Post by goodside »

Hi. I work at OkCupid.

I coud have saved you a lot of trouble. Your results confirm what all dating web sites have always known, and which we've made no secret about: Nearly all initial messages are sent by men.

This does not mean that the site is "better" for women than for men, relative to any other form of heterosexual courtship. It's a deeply ingrained cultural, and perhaps biological, norm that men make proposals and the women evaluate them. If you went to a singles bar, you'd find that all drinks bought for strangers were purchased by men for women.

As others have pointed out, the choice of different cities interferes with what you were trying to demonstrate, though the effect size was so huge it was difficult to not confirm it despite the confounding factor.

Re: OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment

#38

Post by 3pt14159 »

continuations wrote: post #10

Interestingly the SECOND BEST looking woman got far more messages than the best looking woman, both in US and UK. I wondered why.

Seriously? I thought she was far more attractive. Actually, both "second best" pictures I thought were more attractive.

Re: OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment

#39

Post by 3pt14159 »

goodside wrote: post #37

Hi. I work at OkCupid. I coud have saved you a lot of trouble. Your results confirm what all dating web sites have always known, and which we've made no secret about: Nearly all initial messages are sent by men. This does not mean that the site is "better" for women than for men, relative to any other form of heterosexual courtship. It's a deeply ingrained cultural, and perhaps biological, norm that men make proposal…

I think he had a good time doing the experiment, so it wasn't really "trouble". Trouble is when you spend a year and a half performing experiments for data that you need as the foundation of your PhD, only to find them available for free in German off of the University of Hannover's website.

Re: OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment

#40

Post by tghw »

goodside wrote: post #37

Hi. I work at OkCupid. I coud have saved you a lot of trouble. Your results confirm what all dating web sites have always known, and which we've made no secret about: Nearly all initial messages are sent by men. This does not mean that the site is "better" for women than for men, relative to any other form of heterosexual courtship. It's a deeply ingrained cultural, and perhaps biological, norm that men make proposal…

Is there any chance of OkTrends coming back any time soon, if ever?
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