<story><title>How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love</title><url>http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s funny... doing all this &amp;#x27;hacking&amp;#x27; to create profiles with awesome match %&amp;#x27;s... is pretty pointless. In my personal experience, a match below 80% is a red flag (serious incompatibilities), but above 85% there aren&amp;#x27;t any big differences.&lt;p&gt;Like he said, he went on 55 dates, but only three second dates. The 55 dates really isn&amp;#x27;t too hard to do without the hacking, it&amp;#x27;s just a question of time. And the &amp;quot;three second dates&amp;quot; means his filter wasn&amp;#x27;t even that great -- he probably would have done better just simply browsing on the site, and only directly messaging the girls he found interesting in the first place.&lt;p&gt;But the real interesting thing here is the clustering into 7 types of women -- that&amp;#x27;s fantastic! I&amp;#x27;d &lt;i&gt;love&lt;/i&gt; to read more about that -- if he could write it up in a blog, OkTrends-style, I feel like it could get a huge number of hits. I think tons of people, including myself, would be interested in the details, especially if he did it for both men and women.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>keerthiko</author><text>I spent about one year on OkC @ approx 40minutes&amp;#x2F;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&amp;#x27;t that hard to find. However, I would say that my manual filtering probably took way less time than he spent implementing his models.&lt;p&gt;He probably learned more engineering and advanced math while I learned how to read subtle messages of profiles, project the right ones of my own and know what&amp;#x27;s worth talking about ahead of time by having conversation online first.&lt;p&gt;He probably got the satisfaction of &amp;#x27;hacking&amp;#x27; the system, while I had more efficient expenditure of money (dates can get expensive on average for guys when you decide to at least offer to pay).&lt;p&gt;None of my OkC prospects looked like they would work out long-term, though I&amp;#x27;m still good online friends with over half of them. I flippantly shut down my account 3 months before I would have to leave the country, because even if I met someone I didn&amp;#x27;t want to be in a long-distance relationship, so I decided to save myself the trouble.&lt;p&gt;And then met a girl the very next day (not kidding) that I really hit it off with when I wasn&amp;#x27;t looking, and we&amp;#x27;re planning to go traveling in Asia next month (it&amp;#x27;s been 7 months).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m a diehard hacker and nerd and all, but when things like this happen, it&amp;#x27;s hard to not wonder if the traditionalists do have a point when saying you can&amp;#x27;t figure these things out with numbers. At least not when people are gaming their numbers :)&lt;p&gt;The math is super-fascinating though, and I hope OkC team does some research into it and integrates some of the ideas: obviously they wouldn&amp;#x27;t want to support uber-profile optimization for multiple groups, but maybe help find the right groups, etc.&lt;p&gt;I do think his biggest win as a male on OkC was being able to generate all the inbound traffic he would want with no invested marketing on his part (besides writing his scripts). That&amp;#x27;s something even the most skilled male OkC connoisseurs find difficult to do.&lt;p&gt;Edited: to add last thought.</text></comment>
<story><title>How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love</title><url>http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s funny... doing all this &amp;#x27;hacking&amp;#x27; to create profiles with awesome match %&amp;#x27;s... is pretty pointless. In my personal experience, a match below 80% is a red flag (serious incompatibilities), but above 85% there aren&amp;#x27;t any big differences.&lt;p&gt;Like he said, he went on 55 dates, but only three second dates. The 55 dates really isn&amp;#x27;t too hard to do without the hacking, it&amp;#x27;s just a question of time. And the &amp;quot;three second dates&amp;quot; means his filter wasn&amp;#x27;t even that great -- he probably would have done better just simply browsing on the site, and only directly messaging the girls he found interesting in the first place.&lt;p&gt;But the real interesting thing here is the clustering into 7 types of women -- that&amp;#x27;s fantastic! I&amp;#x27;d &lt;i&gt;love&lt;/i&gt; to read more about that -- if he could write it up in a blog, OkTrends-style, I feel like it could get a huge number of hits. I think tons of people, including myself, would be interested in the details, especially if he did it for both men and women.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Qworg</author><text>I thought HN of all places would celebrate this - a growth hack by a down and out mathematician. He just increased his inbound funnel by many multiples.  He&amp;#x27;s now &amp;quot;killing it&amp;quot; and has been acquihired by his target. ;)</text></comment>