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Dating by the Numbers: Why “hacking” OkCupid is a waste of everyone’s time

This data point is an outlier.
This data point is an outlier.

Is there no problem out there that can’t be solved by SCIENCE? Apparently not. Indeed, it has recently come to my attention that one heroic nerdy dude actually used MATH to get a girlfriend. No really, an actual girlfriend. As in, a living human female that he’s seen naked. (We can only presume.)

Wired magazine found the story so astonishing that they devoted an entire 3000 word feature to it.

The piece tells the tale of Chris McKinlay, then a grad student in mathematics at UCLA, who went searching for love on OKCupid, a dating site that uses daters’ answers to various questions, ranging from silly to profound, in order to calculate a “match score” that supposedly measures your compatibility with a potential date. But McKinlay wasn’t getting as many dates as he wanted.

So he decided to “reverse-engineer” OkCupid. As McKinlay — ever the romantic — explains on his own blog, he used his mathematical skillz to analyze the “high-dimensional user metadata in [the] putatively bipartite social graph structure [of] OkCupid,” and adjust his own profile accordingly.

Basically, he crunched a lot of numbers to figure out how the kinds of women he was most interested in — in particular one data “cluster dominated by women in their mid-twenties who looked like indie types, musicians and artists” — tended to answer questions. And then he fiddled with his own answers — and his choice of which questions to answer — so he would score higher match percentages with them. Ta da! Suddenly he had more matches.

He claims not to have answered any questions dishonestly, but as Wired notes “he  let his computer figure out how much importance to assign each question, using a machine-learning algorithm called adaptive boosting to derive the best weightings.”

It doesn’t take a math degree to figure out that fudging your answers so they’re more like those of the women you’re targeting will make it look like you’re more like them. You can pull this same trick in real life by pretending to agree with everything a person says.

But you don’t have to be a psychologist to see that doing this kind of defeats the purpose of OKCupid’s match algorithms in the first place. You’re creating the illusion of chemistry where there may be none. Essentially, you’re cheating, but in a really self-defeating way.

And by focusing so intently on statistically crunchable data, he also ignored a lot of the more intangible “data” that the profiles provide if you actually sit down to read them. The numbers don’t reveal anything about a person’s verbal charm, or their sense of humor. They don’t tell you about the interesting little details of the person’s life.

As Katie Heaney notes in a Buzzfeed piece on McKinlay’s strange quest:

[M]uch of the language used in the story reflects a weird mathematician-pickup artist-hybrid view of women as mere data points … often quite literally: McKinlay refers to identity markers like ethnicity and religious beliefs as “all that crap”; his “survey data” is organized into a “single, solid gob”; unforeseen traits like tattoos and dog ownership are called “latent variables.” By viewing himself as a developer, and the women on OkCupid as subjects to be organized and “mined,” McKinlay places himself in a perceived greater place of power. Women are accessories he’s entitled to. Pickup artists do this too, calling women “targets” and places where they live and hang out “marketplaces.” It’s a spectrum, to be sure, but McKinlay’s worldview and the PUA worldview are two stops along it. Both seem to regard women as abstract prizes for clever wordplay or, as it may be, skilled coding. Neither seems particularly aware of, or concerned with, what happens after simply getting a woman to say yes.

And that’s where McKinlay’s system seems to have fallen down entirely. Though Wired is eager to present his “hacking” as a great success, it took McKinlay more than 90 dates  — 87 of them first dates with no followup — before he found his current girlfriend.

In other words, his wondrous system produced a metric shit-ton of “false matches” and wasted a lot of people’s time, including his own.

And in the end it wasn’t his data crunching that brought his girlfriend to his door; as Wired notes, she found him on OKCupid after doing a “search for 6-foot guys with blue eyes near UCLA.” Happily for him, McKinlay already matched her preferences in these areas. In addition to appreciating his height and eye color and location in physical space, she apparently was also charmed by his cynical approach to OkCupid dating, so maybe they are a match made in heaven, if not in his data crunching techniques.

While McKinlay was going on first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date after first date, people I know have found wonderfully compatible matches — and long-term relationships — through OkCupid without having to date dozens of duds along the way.

How? Partly because OkCupid’s match algorithms led them to some interesting candidates. But mainly because they read profiles carefully and looked for compatibility in the words, not the numbers.

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Argenti Aertheri
10 years ago

Oh yeah the 30 year old dude was creepy outright, I was thinking in general, not guys with over a decade on you!

Kim
Kim
10 years ago

OT but a friend linked this on facebook and it’s bugging me in a way that I’d like some help unpacking.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/10607040/Getting-thin-why-is-it-the-ultimate-female-ambition.html

On the surface it seems to be saying, “why is society so screwed up that women feel such an unreasonable need to be thin”, and I think that’s why my friend linked it and thought it was good.

But it really seems to be saying “women are so much sillier than men (and special snowflake me) because they care about being thin to the exclusion of all else.” Sounds like privilege blindness and ‘splaining.

leatapp
leatapp
10 years ago

Marie,
It is rather creepy.

Old Reader
Old Reader
10 years ago

“Basically, he crunched a lot of numbers to figure out how the kinds of women he was most interested in — in particular one data “cluster dominated by women in their mid-twenties who looked like indie types, musicians and artists” — tended to answer questions. And then he fiddled with his own answers — and his choice of which questions to answer — so he would score higher match percentages with them. Ta da! Suddenly he had more matches.”

– I wonder if this would work for the Manosphere? Adjusting for their “type” of woman.

Argenti Aertheri
10 years ago

Old Reader — prolly not, too few of the questions are things like “can your partner ever owe you sex?” and “must women shave their armpits” (and that latter one is a fairly common view). Basically, the questions aren’t bigoted enough to help those bigots.

Old Reader
Old Reader
10 years ago

“On the surface it seems to be saying, “why is society so screwed up that women feel such an unreasonable need to be thin”, and I think that’s why my friend linked it and thought it was good.”

– I certainly don’t feel an unreasonable need to be thin, nor does any woman I know.

“But it really seems to be saying “women are so much sillier than men (and special snowflake me) because they care about being thin to the exclusion of all else.”

– I’ve never met a woman who cares about being thin to the exclusion of all else, has anyone here?

If a woman is concerned about finding a mate, the last thing she needs to worry about is her size.

Despite Manosphere’s objections, there are plenty of men (and women) who are not attracted to thin women. There are even some men (and women) who are only attracted to “plus sized” women, of varying sizes and shapes.

Kiwi girl
Kiwi girl
10 years ago

I’ve never used one of these sites so my question may continue to be naive, but how is it possible to lie/not lie on one of these sites? For example, if the question was whether you liked Italian food, and you like it a bit, is it a “lie” if you say you like it a lot in order to meet women you think you will like, if these women all indicate that they like Italian food a lot?

I think my basic question is, where does misrepresentation about oneself cross the threshold from misrepresentation to lying? Or, maybe, is it possible to actually lie to the types of questions asked?

Because, to me a major warning signal is hearing someone say: I didn’t lie, I just changed my answers a bit.

And bloody hell, it looks like the dude didn’t have the test, training, and validation sets either. And it was apparently all done on one point in time data, or near enough.

Last question: how do people feel about having OKCupid information used in this way, where someone comes along with a data sweep and uses information scooped on many people this way? Because the apparent volume of data he accessed and used makes me creeped out as well.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

Fudging your answers does raise a small red flag for me. It also seems counterproductive. There’s a reason the dude had to sit through so many failed dates before he finally met someone he was compatible with. If you try to dodge the screening questions all you’re doing is setting yourself up to spend time with someone who you probably won’t get along with.

Sredni Vashtar
Sredni Vashtar
10 years ago

Aaaw c’mon, doesn’t seem like this guy deserves to be denounced on here with Paul Elam and roosh and all the rest…just playing the software a bit doesn’t mean he doesn’t respect the actual women behind the data points! I have to disagree that it’s a ‘spectrum’, I think there’s a pretty clear line in the sand between ‘is a nerd with excess time on their hands and a slightly over- analytic approach to human relationships’ and ‘treats women like an inert prize to be claimed’. Maybe the latter attitude requires a bit of the former, but that doesn’t mean the former implies the latter. (You know, as in: All men are mortals, not all mortals are men).

Old Reader
Old Reader
10 years ago

She also hacked online dating. And got a TED talk from it.

contrapangloss
contrapangloss
10 years ago

Hi Old Reader!

Short answer, yes.

They have recovered, quite well. However posts that imply that they were stupid or silly in order to care so much about their appearance back when they were anorexic/bullemic really doesn’t help their peace of mind.

I know that probably wasn’t your intention, but the social pressure and self pressure on girls (and guys) to be thin is incredibly hard for certain individuals, through no fault of their own.

It’s also becoming a more recognized problem; especially since younger. Between 1999 and 2006, the rate of hospitalizations for children under twelve more than doubled in the US.

We got a problem. Saying people who are effected by the problem are silly for succumbing to societal pressures doesn’t help.

I know that wasn’t your intention, and I do feel a little sorry for jumping down your throat like this, but knowing the people I know… This issue kinda trips my ‘must-defend-friend-group’ trigger.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

Yeah, anorexia is not a thing that happens because people are just too suggestible and not as strong and awesome as the people who didn’t develop it.

shayla
shayla
10 years ago

@Kim, I do find that article a bit odd, the ending is all right but the beginning is a little too much of her gawking and gasping over all these women with body image issues, there’s a little twinge of “I’m superior for not having these issues”; also I find the men’s reaction to her weight loss just as horrifying in a different way (“ew you’re not sexually attractive anymore”) so how come no article about them? I think there’s a bad habit in society of dissecting women’s psychology so much more often and more intensely.

Kim
Kim
10 years ago

If there was a subset of people you found particularly attractive, and you found out that overwhelmingly that subset found it very important for a partner to do/believe a particular thing that you didn’t do/believe so you decided not to answer questions about that so it wouldn’t lower your match score, that wouldn’t be lying but it wouldn’t be very helpful. I wouldn’t consider it creepy, but maybe it should make you rethink why you are going after that subset of people.

But it’s also possible to see how your answers compare to an individuals and change them to improve your match with that person. That would be super creepy.

katz
10 years ago

Also I’m sure every single one of those 88 dates that didn’t get a follow-up was because he was being picky. Not a single solitary woman met him and didn’t like him.

wordsp1nner
wordsp1nner
10 years ago

So, off topic (AND MASSIVE RAPE APOLOGIA TRIGGER WARNING), but Woody Allen has released a statement about Dylan Farrow’s claims that he sexually abused her, and reading it (a) got rid of any lingering doubt that she was telling to the truth and (b) is about the purest distillation of rape culture outside of MRA rantings I have ever read.

The important paragraph:

I naïvely thought the accusation would be dismissed out of hand because of course, I hadn’t molested Dylan and any rational person would see the ploy for what it was. Common sense would prevail. After all, I was a 56-year-old man who had never before (or after) been accused of child molestation. I had been going out with Mia for 12 years and never in that time did she ever suggest to me anything resembling misconduct. Now, suddenly, when I had driven up to her house in Connecticut one afternoon to visit the kids for a few hours, when I would be on my raging adversary’s home turf, with half a dozen people present, when I was in the blissful early stages of a happy new relationship with the woman I’d go on to marry — that I would pick this moment in time to embark on a career as a child molester should seem to the most skeptical mind highly unlikely. The sheer illogic of such a crazy scenario seemed to me dispositive.

So, basically, abuse allegations shouldn’t even be investigated (that’s what “dismissed out of hand” means) because
1) Older men are never guilty of sexual abuse if they have never been accused before.
2) Nobody should believe the first person to accuse someone of sexual assault.
3) Abuse allegations are meaningless if the mother of the victim leaves the accuser.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

@ wordspinner

For bonus points, let’s remember that the “woman I would go on to marry” who he’s referring to was also, at the time, his step-daughter.

wordsp1nner
wordsp1nner
10 years ago

I KNOW. No way in hell am I giving the benefit of a doubt to a man who married his stepdaughter when his daughter accuses him of incest. I am a big believer that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and… well…

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

You know you’re witnessing epic hubris when the dude attempt to reference one case where he abused a child who was in his care to prove that he couldn’t possibly have done the same thing to a different child.

Argenti Aertheri
10 years ago

Kiwi Girl — there are FAR too many yes/no questions that allow no room for nuance. So more likely he’d say he does, and then say it’s more/less important to him that she like Italian food than it actually is.

*scrolls through own profile*

Here’s a good example —

“Do you think really abstract art – like just splattered paint – can be truly brilliant?” Yes or no

So if the sort of woman he’s looking for tends to put “yes”, but he doesn’t really give a fuck whether she does or not, he’d put “yes” as the answer he was looking for and mark it as mandatory. Thus making it more likely he’d be matched with women who said yes => the women he’s looking for.

wordsp1nner
wordsp1nner
10 years ago

Here’s a good take on sexual assault and who gets the benefit of the doubt (hint: not victims)

http://www.rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2014-02-are-children-supposed-to-document-their-abuse#.UvQFrQvCZRp.twitter

My, er, favorite part is where a teen gets told to get proof of her father’s sexual abuse, successfully does, and then his attorney claims that well, she wasn’t lying that the abuse happened, but it hadn’t happened as often as she claimed, because girls are inherently liars.

LBT
LBT
10 years ago

Uuuuuugh, Woody Allen. Just creepy creep creep.

Also, as someone recovering from an eating disorder, I laugh at the idea that they’re entirely created by suggestibility and silly womanfeelings. First, because men do get anorexia, and second, because there are LOTS of folks with eating disorders who feel double-shame because they were raised in a body-positive background or identify as feminists, or whatever else. (I Don’t Have An Eating Disorder covers this really well.)

Basically, eating disorders don’t discriminate. They will take you down regardless of what you believe, how you were brought up, or what culture you’re in. (See: religious anorexia.)

Kiwi girl
Kiwi girl
10 years ago

@Argenti, thanks for the explanation, that makes more sense to me now.

I’m still struggling with the criteria he used to decide that *this subgroup* of women are his type, given that *his type* didn’t seem to like the things he liked/dislike the things he disliked/ value the same things.

I thought the *point* of these websites was to suggest people who are likely compatible on the same shared interests/values. That he fudged his answers suggests:
– the questions used for compatiblility matching are next to useless (not sure how feasible this is)
– the material covered by the questions used for compatibility matching doesn’t match what he thinks are important values/interests (again, not sure of feasibility).

If the matches are that bad, it would suggest that a random sample of people would be the best strategy.

This bit from the Wired article:

Now he just had to decide which cluster best suited him. He checked out some profiles from each. One cluster was too young, two were too old, another was too Christian. But he lingered over a cluster dominated by women in their mid-twenties who looked like indie types, musicians and artists. This was the golden cluster. The haystack in which he’d find his needle. Somewhere within, he’d find true love.

Actually, a neighboring cluster looked pretty cool too—slightly older women who held professional creative jobs, like editors and designers. He decided to go for both. He’d set up two profiles and optimize one for the A group and one for the B group.

I mean, fucking seriously? These are naive clusters, so there will be false positives in each, as well as false negatives who are missing. It sounds like he was focussed on looks, followed by “works in a creative job”. I really don’t think that is the magic two-attribute step to finding “true love”.

And this:

By date 20, he noticed latent variables emerging. In the younger cluster, the women invariably had two or more tattoos and lived on the east side of Los Angeles. In the other, a disproportionate number owned midsize dogs that they adored.

Seriously, “latent variables”?

And I think his profile mining was unethical, and he still did it:

McKinlay watched with satisfaction as his bots purred along. Then, after about a thousand profiles were collected, he hit his first roadblock. OkCupid has a system in place to prevent exactly this kind of data harvesting: It can spot rapid-fire use easily. One by one, his bots started getting banned.

He would have to train them to act human.

He turned to his friend Sam Torrisi, a neuroscientist who’d recently taught McKinlay music theory in exchange for advanced math lessons. Torrisi was also on OkCupid, and he agreed to install spyware on his computer to monitor his use of the site. With the data in hand, McKinlay programmed his bots to simulate Torrisi’s click-rates and typing speed. He brought in a second computer from home and plugged it into the math department’s broadband line so it could run uninterrupted 24 hours a day.

After three weeks he’d harvested 6 million questions and answers from 20,000 women all over the country.

So he purposely implemented a botting method designed to get around bot detection software.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

In terms of the women he was aiming for, honestly, I’m going to say “fetish”. As an older version of those artsy creative women he’s talking about I’ve always loathed the guys who want a girlfriend like that because, rather than in spite of, the fact that they have nothing in common with us.