- Okcupid Match Percentage Chart
- Okcupid Match Percentage Reddit
- Okcupid Match Percentage Match
- Is Okcupid Owned By Match
OkCupid has hundreds upon hundreds of personal questions that it uses to create a personality profile and match percentage for every user. The site has been collecting this data for years, so it can show how user opinions on specific issues have changed over time. The OkCupid match percentage is an excellent indicator of whether you are compatible with another user. But sometimes, the answer to their OkCupid questions is the extra info you need to determine whether they're a good match for you. Furthermore, these questions cover a wide range of topics and you'll be sure to find a worthwhile talking. A match percentage between two people is a condensed, yet statistically valid, expression of how well they might get along. 75% is very high, 45% is very low, and 60.2% is the site-wide average. If, for example, a couple match each other 71%, it means they are likely to like each other, based on their own individual definitions of what makes a.
- We currently don't have a way to set a certain question or detail as an absolute dealbreaker, however on the desktop/ computer version (for now) of OkCupid you can search by question in Discovery. The formula errs on the conservative side, always showing you the lowest possible match percentage you could have with someone. Are they looking for someone who has answered questions the way.
- Ethics literally had zero mismatches, and a 53% match. What is going on here? Related: Edit: Per a couple comments and some quick testing: Your match% drops by 20% if they're outside your area, 10% if you're outside their age range, and 10% if they're outside your age range.
'Can you bring me something citrusy, bourbon-based?' my date demands of our waiter. He pauses to consider—one eyebrow askew—then deftly recites three cocktail options that, one has to assume, will meet her specifications. And right from that moment I just know, in the murky, preverbal way one knows such things, that this young woman—let's call her Ms. K—isn't right for me. I know that the next 45 minutes or so we spend at this dimly lit Cambridge, Massachusetts, restaurant will be, in some sense, a waste of her time and mine, but that politeness or decency or some other vaguely moral compulsion will detain us at the table anyway, sipping bourbon-based cocktails and struggling to find a good topic to converse about. But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised: We met through OkCupid—85 percent match, 23 percent enemy (which sums to 108 percent, seems to me).
Although many users, especially younger users, prefer swipe-based dating apps like Tinder—or its female-founded alter ego, Bumble (on which only women can write first messages)—OkCupid's mathematical approach to online dating remains popular. Nota bene, however, that OkCupid, Tinder, and Match.com are all owned by Match Group, Inc., which—across all three platforms—boasts 59 million active users per month, 4.7 million of whom have paid accounts. Match Group's only real competitor is eHarmony, a site aimed at older daters, reviled by many for its founder's homophobic politics. Since its inception, Match Group has outgrown eHarmony by a pretty significant margin: Its 2014 revenues, for instance, were nearly twice its rival's.
Active since 2004, OkCupid's claim to fame is the warm, fuzzy promise of pre-assured romantic compatibility with one's top matches. OkCupid's algorithm calculates match percentage by comparing answers to 'match questions,' which cover such potentially deal-breaking topics as religion, politics, lifestyle, and—I mean, let's be honest, most importantly—sex.
For each question—say, 'Do you like the taste of beer?' or 'Would you rather be tied up during sex or do the tying?'—you input both your answer and the answers you'll accept from a potential love interest. You then rate the question's importance on a scale that ranges from 'a little' to 'somewhat' to 'very.' (If you mark all possible answers as acceptable, however, the question's importance is automatically downgraded to 'irrelevant' [cue the Borg]).
OkCupid's algorithm then assigns a numerical weight to each question that corresponds to your importance rating, and compares your answers to those of potential matches in a specified geographic area. The formula errs on the conservative side, always showing you the lowest possible match percentage you could have with someone. It also provides an enemy percentage, which is—confusingly—computed without the weighting, meaning it represents a raw percentage of incompatible answers.
Assuming both you and your would-be sweetheart have answered enough questions to ensure a reliable read, getting a 99 percent match with someone—the highest possible—might sound like a ringing endorsement (assuming, of course, you both like each other's looks in the photos as well). However, according to sociologist Kevin Lewis, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, there's no evidence that a high match percentage reliably translates into a successful relationship. In fact, his research suggests, when it comes to matchmaking, match percentage is, well, irrelevant. 'OkCupid prides itself on its algorithm,' he told me over the phone, 'but the site basically has no clue whether a higher match percentage actually correlates with relationship success.' And ultimately, Lewis suggested, there's a fairly simple reason for this. Brace yourself: 'At the end of the day, these sites are not really interested in matchmaking; they're interested in making money, which means getting users to keep visiting the site. Those goals are even opposed to each other sometimes.'
I can attest. I called Lewis from the third-floor Somerville, Massachusetts apartment that used to belong to my ex-girlfriend and me, a young woman I met on OkCupid. We were a 99 percent match. Looking back on our two-year relationship from that dreary place—I would move out in less than a month's time—I felt eaten alive by pain and regret. Never having met each other, I thought, would have been preferable to what actually happened. My ill-fated date with Ms. K, in fact, was just one in a series of several attempts to salve the heart wound that resulted from the oh-so-serendipitous union with my 99 percent match. Speaking with Lewis that gray October morning was, at least, somewhat comforting in its bleakness.
'The thing that's so interesting—and, from a research perspective, useful—about OkCupid is that their algorithm is transparent and user-driven, rather than the black-box approach employed by Match.com or eHarmony,' he said. 'So, with OkCupid, you tell them what you want, and they'll find your soul mate. Whereas with Match or eHarmony, they say, ‘We know what you really want; let us handle the whole soul mate thing.' But the truth is none of these sites really has any idea what they're doing—otherwise they'd have a monopoly on the market.'
The problem, Lewis noted, is an ancient and obvious one: There's no such thing as love-hacking. 'OkCupid is premised on this great notion that we know what we want,' he said, 'but we often have no idea what makes for chemistry or compatibility.' The algorithm, in other words, is geared to find you someone who's like you—all those political questions, say, on which your ideal match would share your values—which isn't necessarily the same as a desirable long-term partner. Meeting up with a 99 percent match for cocktails, in other words, is sort of like gazing in a mirror on a good hair day, which may explain why the looks-first model employed by Tinder is winning with tech-savvy younger users. It's simpler. It discards the unhelpful information.
So, come Valentine's Day, remember to remember the grim reality: Since the rise of online dating in the early 2000s, research by sociologists, most notably a large-scale 2012 study published by the Association for Psychological Science, has consistently found that matching algorithms, no matter how sophisticated, just do not work. Indeed, the authors of that study wrote, 'no compelling evidence supports matching sites' claims that mathematical algorithms work—that they foster romantic outcomes that are superior to those fostered by other means of pairing partners.' The feel-good principles on which these search-methods are grounded—similarity of values, complementarity of sexual preference—are, sorry to be a killjoy, actually rather poor predictors of subjectively rated romantic success. '[T]hese sites,' the authors continue, 'are in a poor position to know how the two partners will grow and mature over time, what life circumstances they will confront and coping responses they will exhibit in the future, and how the dynamics of their interaction will ultimately promote or undermine romantic attraction and long-term relationship well-being.' When you finally get that note-perfect message from a total cutie—who, OMG, is also a 99 percent match!?—in other words, don't get too excited.
Okcupid Match Percentage Chart
I can attest. I called Lewis from the third-floor Somerville, Massachusetts apartment that used to belong to my ex-girlfriend and me, a young woman I met on OkCupid. We were a 99 percent match. Looking back on our two-year relationship from that dreary place—I would move out in less than a month's time—I felt eaten alive by pain and regret. Never having met each other, I thought, would have been preferable to what actually happened. My ill-fated date with Ms. K, in fact, was just one in a series of several attempts to salve the heart wound that resulted from the oh-so-serendipitous union with my 99 percent match. Speaking with Lewis that gray October morning was, at least, somewhat comforting in its bleakness.
'The thing that's so interesting—and, from a research perspective, useful—about OkCupid is that their algorithm is transparent and user-driven, rather than the black-box approach employed by Match.com or eHarmony,' he said. 'So, with OkCupid, you tell them what you want, and they'll find your soul mate. Whereas with Match or eHarmony, they say, ‘We know what you really want; let us handle the whole soul mate thing.' But the truth is none of these sites really has any idea what they're doing—otherwise they'd have a monopoly on the market.'
The problem, Lewis noted, is an ancient and obvious one: There's no such thing as love-hacking. 'OkCupid is premised on this great notion that we know what we want,' he said, 'but we often have no idea what makes for chemistry or compatibility.' The algorithm, in other words, is geared to find you someone who's like you—all those political questions, say, on which your ideal match would share your values—which isn't necessarily the same as a desirable long-term partner. Meeting up with a 99 percent match for cocktails, in other words, is sort of like gazing in a mirror on a good hair day, which may explain why the looks-first model employed by Tinder is winning with tech-savvy younger users. It's simpler. It discards the unhelpful information.
So, come Valentine's Day, remember to remember the grim reality: Since the rise of online dating in the early 2000s, research by sociologists, most notably a large-scale 2012 study published by the Association for Psychological Science, has consistently found that matching algorithms, no matter how sophisticated, just do not work. Indeed, the authors of that study wrote, 'no compelling evidence supports matching sites' claims that mathematical algorithms work—that they foster romantic outcomes that are superior to those fostered by other means of pairing partners.' The feel-good principles on which these search-methods are grounded—similarity of values, complementarity of sexual preference—are, sorry to be a killjoy, actually rather poor predictors of subjectively rated romantic success. '[T]hese sites,' the authors continue, 'are in a poor position to know how the two partners will grow and mature over time, what life circumstances they will confront and coping responses they will exhibit in the future, and how the dynamics of their interaction will ultimately promote or undermine romantic attraction and long-term relationship well-being.' When you finally get that note-perfect message from a total cutie—who, OMG, is also a 99 percent match!?—in other words, don't get too excited.
Okcupid Match Percentage Chart
This tendency of ours to think that superficially alike should mean romantically compatible, Lewis notes, plays out in another predictably disappointing way: OkCupid users stick almost exclusively to people of their own race. 'Race, as other studies have indicated, is the biggest divisive factor in romantic markets and romantic pairings in the United States,' he said. 'And people are heavily self-segregating online, just as they are in real life.' In Lewis's eyes, this kind of self-segregation doesn't necessarily mean that online date-seekers all harbor latent racist attitudes; rather, it reflects a psychological tendency to assume that people of other races don't want us to contact them.
His research on OkCupid messaging data lends some support to that conclusion. 'My big finding is that people are more likely to be open to interracial interaction when the other person makes the first move,' he said. 'In addition, a person of another race contacting me makes me more likely to contact someone from another race. But we don't observe this effect generally—if a Hispanic woman contacts me, I'm more likely to contact other Hispanic women, but the same doesn't hold for me contacting black women—and it dissipates within about a week.' There we all sit, staring at some meaningless numbers set against OkCupid's trademark navy-and-magenta color scheme, perhaps ogling people from different racial backgrounds and contemplating messaging them, and then, inevitably, clicking back to Facebook, convinced they won't like us because of our skin color. 'The risk of rejection and the fear of vulnerability are very real,' Lewis was saying as I walked into my kitchen, wondering whether 3:16 p.m. was too early for a gin and tonic.
For all this quantitative precision, still the human toll of online dating is hard to measure. It's an over $2 billion a year industry that, as far as we know, produces no greater happiness than meeting people more or less at random through the happenstance of everyday life. What's more, for every rhapsodical success story, there's (at least) one of devastating heartbreak. Now, in 2016—more than 15 years after the founding of eHarmony—it seems safe to say that online dating is here to stay, but, ironically, its continued success seems to be a function of its ubiquity. We use sites like OkCupid, in other words, because they're there, and because something is better than nothing. And all this is saying nothing of the notoriously sexist and gender-normative culture that prevails on OkCupid, with guys writing creepy, sexually aggressive messages to women en masse. Which leads to me wonder if, in the end, Weezer—as they often did—might have put it best: Why bother?
That said, I don't think I am doing anything Friday night, and wow, she's pretty cute! Hmm… *swipes right.*
Guest Author: Michalina Malysz
'Like you use sentences to tell a person a story; you use algorithms to tell a story to a computer' (Rudder 2013).
In today's day and age, we have the world at our fingertips. The internet has made many things easier, including dating, allowing us to interact and connect with a plethora of new people–even those that were deemed unreachable just fifteen minutes beforehand.
Inside OKCupid: The math behind online datingtalks about the math formula that is used to match people with others on the website OKCupid, the number one website behind online dating. Christian Rudder, one of the founders of OKCupid, examines how an algorithm can be used to link two people and to examine their compatibility based on a series of questions. As they answer more questions with similar answers, their compatibility increases.
You may be asking yourself how we explain the components of human attraction in a way that a computer can understand it. Well, the number one component is research data. OKCupid collects data by asking users to answer questions: these questions can range from minuscule subjects like taste in movies or songs to major topics like religion or how many kids the other person desires.
Many would think these questions were based on matching people by their likes; it does often happen that people answer questions with opposite responses. When two people disagree on a question asked, the next smartest move would be to collect data that would compare answers against the answers of the ideal partner and to add even more dimension to this data (such as including a level of importance). For example- What role do the certain question(s) play in the subject's life? What level of relevancy are they? In order to calculate compatibility, the computer must find a way to compare the answer to each question, the ideal partner's answer to each question and the level of importance of the question against that of someone else's answers. The way that this is done is by using a weighted scale for each level of importance as seen below:
Level of Importance Point Value
Irrelevant 0
A Little Important 1
Somewhat Important 10
Very Important 50
Mandatory 250
Okcupid Match Percentage Reddit
You may be asking yourself ‘How is this computed?: Let's say you are person A and the person the computer is trying to match you with is person B. The overall question would be: How much did person B's answers satisfy you? The answer is set up as a fraction. The denominator is the total number of points that you allocated for the importance of what you would like. The numerator is the total number of points that person B's answers received. Points are given depending on the other person's response to what you were looking for. The number of points is based on what level of importance you designated to that question.
This is done for each question; the fractions are then added up and turned into percentages. The final percentage is called your percent satisfactory – how happy you would be with person B based on how you answered the questions. Step two is done similarly, except, the question to answer is how much did your answers satisfy person B. So after doing the computation we are a left with a percent satisfactory of person B.
The overall algorithm that OKCupid uses is to take the n-root of the product of person A's percent satisfaction and person B's percent satisfaction. This is a mathematical way of expressing how happy you would be with each other based on how you answered the questions for the computer. Why use this complex algorithm of multiplication and square-rooting when you can just take the average of the two scores? Well, a geometric mean, which is 'a type of mean or average which indicates the central tendency or typical value of a set of numbers' (Rudder, 2013), is ideal for this situation because it is great for sets of values with wide ranges and is great at comparing values that represent very different properties, such as your taste in literature and your plans for the future and even whether or not you believe in God (best of all, the algorithm can still be useful even when there is a very small set of data). It uses margin of error, which is 'a statistic expressing the amount of random sampling error in a surveys results' (Rudder, 2013), to give person A the most confidence in the match process. It always shows you the lowest match percentage possible because they want person A and person B to answer more questions to increase the confidence of the match. For example, if person A and B only had answered two of the same questions margin of error for that sample size will be 50%. This means that the highest possible match percentage is 50%. Below I have included a table that shows how many of the same questions (size of s) must be answered by 2 people in order to get a .001 margin of error or a 99.99% match.
Okcupid Match Percentage Match
Now that we know how the computer comes up with this algorithm, it makes you wonder how do these match percentages affect the odds of person A sending one or more messages to person B. It turns out that people at OKCupid had been interested in this question as well and had messed with some of the matches in the name of science. It turns out that the percent match actually does have an effect on the likelihood of a message being sent and the odds of a single message turning into a conversation. For example, if person A was told that they were only a 30% match with person B (and they were only a 30% match), then there's a 14.2 % chance that a single message would be sent and about a 10% chance of a single message turning into a conversation of four or more messages. However if person A was told that they are 90% match (even if they are only a 30% match), then the odds of sending one message is 16.9% and the odds that the one message turns into exchanging 4 or more is 17% . Online dating for christian singles.
I believe that the future of online dating is very broad and exciting. However I have some concerns about the algorithm and that it relies heavily on a person's honesty and self-assessment. If I was to further analyze this topic I would look into how the length of the first message affects the response rates. Also, how it affects the odds that the conversation will continue for four or more messages and whether those messages would the same length or longer/shorter than the initial message sent. The extent of the questions that have yet to be asked about this particular set of data and the idea of online dating/ matching with people who are possibly oceans away are enormous; however, the data will linger on the Internet for many years to come and I'm sure will analyzed hundreds of times more to answer many many more questions.
Is Okcupid Owned By Match
Citations:
Hill, K. (2014, July 28.). OKCupid Lied To Users About Their Compatibility As An Experiment. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/07/28/okcupid-experiment-compatibility-deception/#4cbde4745eb1
Match Percentage. (n.d.). Retrieved April 26, 2016, from https://www.okcupid.com/help/match-percentages
Rudder, C. (2013, February 13). Inside OKCupid: The math of online dating. [Video file]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9PiPlRuy6E
Rudder, C. (2014). Dataclysm: Who We Are*. New York: Crown Publishers.
Figure 1. Margin of error vs. highest possible match. From 'Match Percentage,' https://www.okcupid.com/help/match-percentages. Copyright[2015] by OkCupid. Reprinted with permission.
Figure 2. Odds of sending one and/or more messages from 30% match. From 'OkCupid Lied To Users About Their Compatibility As An Experiment,' by Kashmir Hill, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/07/28/okcupid-experiment-compatibility-deception/2/#2f78a64f5eb1. Copyright [2014] by Forbes. Reprinted with permission.
Figure 3. Odds of a single message turning into a conversation based on match percent. From 'OkCupid Lied To Users About Their Compatibility As An Experiment,' by Kashmir Hill, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/07/28/okcupid-experiment-compatibility-deception/2/#2f78a64f5eb1. Copyright [2014] by Forbes. Reprinted with permission.
