majordojo

OKCupid consistently amazes me with the analysis they publish drawing from the mountains of data they collect through their online dating site. It provides a fascinating insight into our behavior and what makes us tick, like the Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex blog post that made the rounds a couple of months ago - which provided data that debunked one of the most commonly held stereotypes help by homophobics - that gays are sexually attracted to straight people and are seeking to convert them. Not that I suspect a bigot to read such a blog post or anything, but it was enlightening and fascinating nonetheless.

The most recent analysis seeks to find a statistical correlation of a woman's "attractiveness" measured by the number of messages they receive from men interested in them. The results are surprising:

Applying the additive property of equality which states:

  If A = B, 
  then A + C = B + C

Allows us to conclude that if:

If "She's Beautiful" + "She's Ugly" >  "She's Beautiful" + "She's Cute", 
then "She's Ugly" > "She's Cute".

Which I suppose is not that surprising when you consider from an evolutionary point of view that the performance of a individual within a group is more often affected by their differentiated traits rather than the ones that tend towards them being lost in the crowd.

This is of course very validating for a nerd like myself - one who struggled to be popular, and who ultimately decided, "to hell with them, all I can do is be me." That moment when I decided to start celebrating what made me weird as opposed to trying to hide it is the day I started being happy in school.

There is a similar lesson in this for all of us though, echoed by OkCupid's advice:

But our advice can apply to anyone. Browsing OkCupid, I see so many photos that are clearly designed to minimize some supposedly unattractive trait--the close-cropped picture of a person who's probably overweight is the classic example. We now have mathematical evidence that minimizing your "flaws" is the opposite of what you should do. If you're a little chubby, play it up. If you have a big nose, play it up. If you have a weird snaggletooth, play it up: statistically, the guys who don't like it can only help you, and the ones who do like it will be all the more excited.

Filed in Ain't it Cool and tagged infographic, math, nerd, okcupid, popular, statistics