
How Races and Religions Match in Online Dating - noodle
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/09/29/how-races-and-religions-match-in-online-dating/
======
sharpn
I liked this on a few different levels:

-Hacking data to reveal the answers to important difficult questions.

-Exploring contentious issues in a neutral & intelligent way.

-Great example of how to attract potential customers by providing valuable information that also gently demonstrates competence related to your service & differentiates your offering from competitors.

I enjoyed reading this, I learnt something, and I thought favourably of the
website based on this. No idea how good they are, but that post was a good
marketing lesson.

~~~
vaksel
okcupid is pretty much considered the hip version of plenty of fish.

~~~
sharpn
I don't know what that means, but I did think this was a brilliant marketing
post from a company, and an interesting read.

~~~
vaksel
it means that plentyoffish has nothing but fat chicks(everyone calls it Plenty
of Fat), while okcupid has the hipster girls

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shalmanese
One possible explanation for the low Hindu-Hindu match is that there are many
websites dedicated to specifically Hindu dating which means that the Hindus
using OkCupid are those who are specifically not looking for a Hindu date.

For other religions, such sites aren't nearly as prevalent.

~~~
alanthonyc
Not really.

The matches are based on answers users give to questions (both site designed
and user designed).

When the blogger says they don't match, it means:

    
    
      - Person A: I like X
    
      - Person B: I don't like people who like X
    

Where X could mean ice cream, god or tooth-brushing. It has nothing to do with
people selecting the race or religion of the people they _think_ they want to
date.

~~~
ecuzzillo
Yeah, but if Hindu men like ice cream, and I don't want Hindu men, I might not
like men who like ice cream either because a) it's what Hindu men do, or b) I
don't like people who like ice cream to begin with, and I don't like Hindu men
for that reason.

So it's not totally unrelated.

~~~
hughprime
But is there anything you can replace "ice cream" with to make it a workable
example? What _real_ questions are you likely to see this kind of Hindu-Hindu
antimatching behaviour on?

~~~
chime
Arranged-marriage.

~~~
ryne
Sorry are you serious? Why would a Hindu that is pro-arranged marriage be on a
dating website? Arranged marriages were a severe form of keeping the caste
system in tact but that's not applicable now. But then again your type of
logic can probably explain why Islamic people aren't liked since everyone is
anti-terrorism.

------
codexon
They left out the axis on the "message reply rate" diagram as a teaser for the
next blog post.

I just copy and pasted the image onto the axis. It shows that white and native
American males are more likely to get responses than the other races.

<http://www.codexon.com/temp/mrr.png>

And I wrote a small analysis here if you can be bothered to take a look.

[http://www.codexon.com/posts/okcupid-dating-statistics-
shows...](http://www.codexon.com/posts/okcupid-dating-statistics-shows-racism-
very-much-alive)

~~~
camccann
Assuming they didn't deliberately shuffle the ordering just to confound people
like you.

Your results look depressingly plausible, though, so I'm guessing not.

~~~
potatolicious
As a single male Asian I am praying that the first row isn't me. But odds are
it is anyway :( It certainly conforms with stereotypes about Asian girls...

~~~
araneae
You're lucky to be an Asian male... look at the black male line. It's the only
one that doesn't have a single green square.

EDIT: Also, look at the response line from black females; they're _all green_
except for the yellow square in response to black males.

------
papersmith
Am I the only one who had a good chuckle at the zodiac grid?

~~~
padmapper
Nope, hilarious.

And that's the first really solid evidence that I've seen shared that zodiac
signs are utter BS, which makes me doubly grateful to them. Something to point
to when someone says it can't be proved otherwise...

~~~
ZitchDog
The best evidence against astrology I've heard came from my college astronomy
professor. Basically, due to the precession of the earth on its axis, the
constellations are visible at completely different times than they were when
astrology was invented. So even if it wasn't BS back then, it sure is now.

[http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/your-astronomical-
sig...](http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/your-astronomical-sign.html)

~~~
padmapper
Ooh, even more portable, no computer needed. Thanks!

------
dkokelley
Favorite line of the article: _"If religion is a minefield, then race is a
field that’s just one giant mine"_

The article was not quite as statistically sound as it could be, but at least
they aren't trying to pass it off as statistical data.

------
elai
It seems like recently immigrated groups who are not established and similar
disadvantaged groups of people do worse than the established.

------
CatBaby
I can only imagine what else OkCupid's data would reveal in adept hands. I
could probably write a book if they sent me a spreadsheet.

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bdr
I'm loving this blog. Have we seen match percent vs reply rate anywhere?

~~~
jrockway
I think this is probably too biased, as messages from users with a close match
percentage are highlighted in your "inbox". The data might not be good enough
to discern between "replied to message because it was highlighted" and
"replied to message becuase match % was high".

(Personally, I have a feeling that "pretty profile picture" is more
influential than "high match %". But of course, it's very hard to measure what
one considers physically attractive.)

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alextp
This is hilariously interesting. Data mining can always bring good insights if
you have good data.

I wonder, though, (a) if most people search for similar people or for
different people, (b) how well does the matching percentage really reflect a
"liking probability" (ie, there is always some wishful thinking when designing
date profiles, and some of that might be counter-productive, ruling out good
matches).

------
known
Endogamous marriages in Ashkenazi Jews have resulted in serious genetic
disorders and hereditary diseases.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews#Specific_disease...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews#Specific_diseases_and_disorders)

~~~
stevejohnson
Could you elaborate on how this relates to the article? I'm sure you have an
interesting point to make, but I find it difficult to extrapolate.

------
ALee
The article fails to mention statistical significance of race versus religion?

Because this data makes sense, I hesitate to protest. Nevertheless, I'd be
interested to see if race is statistically significant versus religion.

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SeanLuke
So many statistics.

So little statistical significance testing.

This tells me much about this service.

~~~
lamby
I'm not sure it's valid to infer that their entire service is poor from these
series of rather niche blog posts.

(Although saying that, I wonder if this series of theirs is to attract press
attention? If so, then it would be nice to see some significance data.)

------
stakent
Brilliant.

Free publicity. Great lesson in PR. Thank you.

------
Chukwu
While I love the number crunching ethos, and think these guys are giving it
one hell of a go - I will go on the record and say that they will ultimately
fail because they are operating under many false premises, a few being:

1\. People do not change their minds.

By algorithmically matching based on answers to questions, you must assume
that those answers are meaningful. And meaningful means CONSISTENT. And people
are NOT consistent. Especially on complex issues; in fact there are whole
professions (sales (insurance, real estate, car, etc) comes immediately to
mind) where success is based on one's ability to get people to change their
minds. (That example is offered as evidence, not proof - but proof probably
isnt a complicated exercise)

2\. Like Thinkers make Great Daters

Assuming you are even GETTING like thinkers, (which is tenuous at best) where
is it written that like thinkers make great companions? You don't want to have
absolutely nothing in common, (at least a common language is necessary) but it
isn't linear and i would be surprised if there were any correlation let alone
one that was non-asymptotic. Simply - more like thoughts does not entail more
compatibility.

3\. Looks aren't EVERYTHING

Just based on sheer observation - this is not the case. It is unfortunate, and
it speaks badly about human nature, but most human beings make judgments based
on appearances. And this "appearance crutch" is only exacerbated when it comes
to looking for someone to lay with. How many single, male, bleeding heart
liberals would take a swing at Sarah Palin if given an iota of an opportunity?
Again - offered as evidence, not proof.

~~~
potatolicious
_"where is it written that like thinkers make great companions?"_

OKCupid does not judge match percentage based on similar answers. For every
question on the system it will ask for _your_ answer and your _ideal mate's_
answer. The system knows that some things are important to some people - but
maybe not in reverse.

~~~
Chukwu
4\. People Know what they want

Clearly they don't - otherwise they wouldn't be on okcupid in the first place.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
What do you mean by this?

------
ilyak
Really-really interesting.

I'm curious why asian females scored worst of all when asian males scored
descent.

~~~
hughprime
The differences on the race graph are so small as to be insignificant.

~~~
pyre
Keep in mind that the 'Match %' is based on OKCupid.com's algorithms that
number crunch against quiz answers that the users answer. This has nothing to
do with 'success rate' of users on the site hooking up with other users.

~~~
potatolicious
Right, so compare that with the message reply rate chart at the bottom of the
article. Assuming the axes haven't changed from other charts on the page
(which IMHO is a pretty good assumption)...

It suggests that certain races have good _matches_ with other races, but
horrible _reply rates_. Reply rate may be the best metric okcupid has as to
"success rate". It also suggests strong racial biases on the part of its
users.

~~~
codexon
To elaborate more on your point:

Many people claim they aren't racist when they refuse to date other races.
They always say they haven't found the right <insert minority race here>
guy/girl.

What I've found from personal experience, is that the bar is set much higher
for those minority races.

~~~
pyre
You can't attribute lack of attraction to racism.

While it's possible for people to not date anyone of a certain race because
they are bigoted against that race, I think that it's more common for people
to just not feel a strong physical attraction towards certain races. My theory
on this is that people that haven't grown up (at least during their childhood
and/or teenage years) with many people of a certain race won't end up finding
most of the 'feature' characteristics of that race to be attractive (i.e. if
you grow up in a mostly white neighborhood you might not find black women
attractive).

I could be completely off-base here. I have no idea how the development of
attraction in the brain works (and I'm sure there's probably much research
into this area of psychology). But I tend to find that a lot of people
(whether they admit to it or not) have a preference for certain races and not
others. Sometimes people don't have a preference for their own race. I know
Asian women that are not attracted at all to Asian men, but that doesn't stop
them from having Asian men as friends and interacting with them. I would
hardly think that they are bigoted against Asians (seeing as they _are_ Asian
themselves).

> _What I've found from personal experience, is that the bar is set much
> higher for those minority races._

It's not necessarily minority races. There are plenty of people that are not
attracted to others of their own race. 'Yellow-fever,' 'jungle-fever,' etc
weren't created for 'one-off' instances (i.e. the person accused of having
'the fever' only dated a person of that race once, and doesn't have an
affinity to dating persons of that race) of inter-racial
dating/mating/marriage.

------
GrandMasterBirt
Bullshit, us pastaferians are not represented in the religious statistics!
This is heracy!

On the other hand I am glad I'm not Aquarius because statistically speaking
they are insignificantly less compatible with an Aquarius. His noodelieness
has blessed me well!

RAmen!

------
kingkawn
go jews!

~~~
jrockway
The atheists and agnostics beat the jews, however.

~~~
kingkawn
actually because of the response of muslim women to jews being more positive
than to ath/agn, I think Jewish men overall come out on top.

Combine that with Jewish men who ARE atheists, which is a good number of em,
and you've got a super-match. Which all goes to prove what my mother always
told me; "I love you."

------
jacquesm
Non-hacking, race & religion in one article, that's got to be a record for
flamebait.

~~~
showerst
I'd argue that it's quite a hack -- Trying to discern an algorithmic approach
to attraction via a large data set, and create a recommendation engine to a
very fuzzy problem. =)

~~~
potatolicious
I'd argue that it's not at all a "hack" (I really dislike HN's tendency to
equate everything to a hack), but nonetheless of significant interest to those
of us interested in statistical trends in large web systems and social
networks.

This kind of statistical kung-fu is well worth a look even if your own
interests do not lie in dating sites.

------
dmoney
They need to make it a little more clear that they're not trying to say
anything bad about a particular group.

