BUSINESS ANALYTICS

AND STRATEGY
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 OKCupid
OkCupid is a U.S.-based, internationally operating online dating, friendship, and
formerly also a social networking website and application. It features multiple-choice
questions to match members.
To generate matches, OkCupid applies data generated by users' activities on the
site, as well as their answers to questions. When answering a question, a user indicates
their own answer, the answers they would accept from partners, and the level of
importance they place on the question. The results of these questions can be made
public. OkCupid describes in detail the algorithm used to calculate match
percentages. Assuming a user is a paid user ("A-List"), the site notifies a user if
someone likes that user.
Inside OKCupid: The math behind online dating talks about the math formula that is
used to match people with others on the website. 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.
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.
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. For example- What role do the certain question 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
Let’s say a 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.
Now that we know how the computer comes up with this algorithm, it makes us 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% .