I figure I'm attracted to maybe 1 out of 10 of those men. And there was, you know, no way I was going to deal with somebody who was an avid golfer. So that basically meant there were 35 men for me that I could possibly date in the entire of city of Philadelphia. So if I have two possible strategies at this point - I'm sort of figuring out.
One, I can take my grandmother's advice and sort of least expect my way into maybe bumping into the 1 out of 35 possible men in the entire 1. Now, I like the idea of online dating because it's predicated on an algorithm. And that's really just a simple way of saying I've got a problem. I'm going to use some data, run it through a system and get to a solution. So in my case, I thought will data and an algorithm lead me to my Prince Charming?
Ted Online Dating Algorithm
So I decided to sign on. Now, the biggest problem is that I hate filling out questionnaires of any kind. And I certainly don't like questionnaires that are like Cosmo quizzes. So I just copied and pasted from my resume. So in the descriptive part up top I said that I was an award-winning journalist and a future thinker. When I was asked about fun activities and, like, my ideal date, I said monetization and fluency in Japanese. I talked a lot about JavaScript.
Yeah, maybe that wasn't the best way for me to introduce myself. But, you know, the crazy thing is that even though I had foolishly copied and pasted from my resume, it didn't stop the dating services from matching me with other people. And it certainly didn't stop those people from asking me out on dates. I had some dates that were pretty rough. I was being set up with very, very Orthodox rabbis, which was, like, a no-go from the get-go, people who were super interested in sports. There was being stuck with the check. There was a another guy who was diminutive and ordered a lot of Long Island Iced Teas.
And we were out doing karaoke on our first date, and he ran up on stage and sang a bunch of songs and then dedicated them to his girlfriend. And I was like, I have no idea who you are. I just met you, like, 20 minutes ago. I am not your girlfriend. Now, the thing you should know about Amy Webb is that she crunches numbers for a living.
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She analyzes data that helps big companies make more accurate predictions. And so she started to wonder, what if love isn't so mysterious at all? What if, instead of analyzing data for her clients, why not do it for herself? And what if, by doing that, she could game the system? You know, in any other case, I would do market research. Why wouldn't I do market research, you know, on myself? So dating websites are sort of predicated on some pretty basic, not very exciting math. And in order to make things work, there has to be a limited number of choices, a limited number of variables.
So it's a lot easier to parse do you like cats or dogs than it is to parse something like chemistry, right. Knowing that there was superficial data that was being used to match me up with other people, I decided instead to ask my own questions. What was every single possible thing that I could think of that I was looking for in a mate? Somebody who was going to be totally OK with forcing our child to start taking piano lessons at age 3. And at the end, I had amassed 72 different data points, which, to be fair, is a lot.
So what I did was I went through and I prioritized that list. I broke it into a top tier and a second tier of points. And I ranked everything starting at and going all the way down to So once I had all this done, I then built a scoring system.
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What I wanted to do was to sort of mathematically calculate whether or not I thought the guy that I found online would be a match with me. I figured there would be a minimum of points before I would agree to email somebody or respond to an email message.
For points, I'd agree to go out on a date. And I wouldn't even consider any kind of relationship before somebody had crossed the 1,point threshold. And this is, like, unbelievable. You are like Alan Turing, like, cracking the enigma code. You've cracked the online dating code. Well, I cracked if for myself.
- my husband has online dating profiles;
- Amy Webb: Can You Use Algorithms To Find Love? : NPR!
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And I think that's what this comes right down to. A lot of people are - they either go into relationships not really knowing what they want and they change or they've settled. And when you make your list, when you really think about who it is that's going to make you happy in the long term and what you're going to need, that should be the time that you make the most detailed list of your entire life. I know people who have a handful of things they're looking for in a mate, but who have grocery lists that are three pages long. You are grocery shopping for a soulmate. There isn't a lot of science behind cracking the code.
It's about figuring out what you need to make you happy and then going out and getting it. You know, in my case, I didn't want to go out on 50 dates. I wanted to go out on one date with the right person and be done. Well, as it turns out, this worked pretty well. So I go back online now, I found JewishDoc57, who's incredibly good looking, incredibly well-spoken. He had walked along the Great Wall. He likes to travel as long as it doesn't involve a cruise ship, right. And I thought I've done it.
I've cracked the code. I have just found the Jewish Prince Charming Of my family's dreams. There was only one problem - he didn't like me back. And I guess the one variable that I haven't considered is the competition.
- Amy Webb: How I hacked online dating | TED Talk!
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Who are all of the other women on these dating sites? She said she was a fun girl who is happy and outgoing.
She listed her job as teacher. She said she is silly, nice and friendly. She likes to make people laugh a lot. At this moment, I knew, clicking after profile, after profile, after profile that looked like this that I needed to do some market research. So I created 10 fake, male profiles. Now before I lose all of you All right, understand that I did this strictly to gather data about everybody else in the system.
I didn't carry on crazy catfish-style relationships with anybody. This woman is a researcher of vulnerability, so we know to believe Brene when she tells us how human connection works. She shares parts of her research that sent her on a personal quest to understand herself as well as humanity. Amy was no stranger to the perils of online dating.
In an effort to improve her game, she took her love of data and made her own matchmaking algorithm, thus hacking the way online dating is typically done and meeting her husband along the way. It seems impossible these two should be able to balance, but guess what? She lets us in on the secret. Jenna tells us how it really is with the surprising research behind how marriages especially happy ones actually work.