Online dating proved to be a rote, tedious process. I would click around aimlessly for a few hours after a long day spent grading. When I actually did stumble across a woman I liked, she usually hadn’t been online for months, had a full mailbox, or would simply ignore my message.
Whenever I came to him with a particularly sticky physics problem, my adviser Mike was fond of saying: “Getting a PhD in physics doesn’t mean anything, really. Ultimately what you’re doing here is earning a degree in quantitative problem solving. Any kind of problem.” With that spirit and a notebook, I did what any physicist would do. I fired up MATLAB, and started building my model.
My model visualized online dating as a series of Bernoulli trials, a type of randomized experiment where two people’s first impressions of each other could be modeled via a pair of biased coin flips. Only if both parties land on heads (ie “you’re hot!”) do they go out.'
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday February 27 2015, @12:17AM
He was doing it wrong: Internet is not for dating, Internet is for ... [youtube.com]
I bet if he'd have headed to a popular bar and had/shared a shot or two of a good quality spirit, he would have solved the problem satisfactory enough to not need that notebook and/or MATLAB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday February 27 2015, @12:23AM
Otherwise, an interesting story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @02:12AM
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato
(Score: 3, Informative) by Nuke on Friday February 27 2015, @11:17AM
I realized she lived on my street, two blocks down. She knew a bunch of my friends, too, and she’d worked at the coffee shop around the corner. A pesky little voice pointed out that if I had gone outside once in a while instead of staying in my bed and coding maybe I would’ve run into her.
"Running into" someone does not mean "getting a date". And do you call being served a coffee "running into someone" ? The problem with meeting people "in real life" is that the participants need to form an opinion of the other in just a few seconds - an opinion of whether even to continue the conversation or politely (or rudely) terminate it. If it is terminated nothing is found out about the other than general appearance. People tell me that women like men who are intelligent and financially solvent with good careers; I reckon I am all of those but how would a girl know that if, when I approach her, she promptly tells me to get lost? Should I have a flag on my hat that says "Well-off and intelligent" ?
OTOH with online dating the other person has at least got some advance clues as to the sort of person you are. The most important of these is that the other person actually wants to meet someone. The coffee shop waitress might not. What is needed it some way to break the ice and get some talking between you. It does not really matter if you tell lies in your profile because the truth will start to emerge as you meet and talk. For example if woman's profile said she was 25 but she looks 50 when you meet, you can walk away after the first coffee (or before). If she has not said that she is a single mother, she won't be able to keep that secret for long. Waitresses you meet in coffee shops can tell lies too, would you believe.
How successful you are at chatting up coffee shop waitresses depends on your personality. It never worked for me and I soon gave up. Women actually quite like me when they know me, but generally not at not at first sight - not because I am bad looking, but because I tend to be poker faced, so I am told.
I don't understand this guy's mechanism, but it just sounds like he is simply contacting as many women as possible. I did that too, but manually. It is true that the ones who sound ideal (ie in background, education and interests) seem the least likely to respond for some reason, so, like this guy, I soon learned to widen the target. In fact had most success with girls from backgrounds nothing like mine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @01:33AM
T..Th.. That's not optimal!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 27 2015, @01:43AM
So true.
To be optimal, however, one would need to own a distillery: mass production will guarantee the price/date (via spirit shots) will go down.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Friday February 27 2015, @12:31AM
Automatically checking out every females' profile multiple times a day is pretty creepy. But once you get the dates, and it goes nowhere time after time, what do you do?
These two threads [reddit.com] over at Reddit AMA [reddit.com] have some critical knowledge for the single folk.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @02:32AM
> The second thing is self love.
Most people have more practice at self love than at integrity.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by sfm on Friday February 27 2015, @03:44AM
Amy Webb did a TED talk on a similar subject. Check out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wG_sAdP0U [youtube.com]
An anecdotal monolog about using statistics to beat the online
dating disadvantages. Maybe not as reliable at MATLAB, but still
an enjoyable watch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @09:11AM
Indeed. If she were Christian (and still single) I would definitely like to go out with her. She would be absolutely fascinating to spend some quality time with.
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Friday February 27 2015, @05:04AM
Obviously the article link [theguardian.com] isn't down, but the site [yaydating.com] the author created to monetize his bot is. Specifically the site is up but when you try to run the bot on your behalf it says:
"Megaphone is at capacity right now :(
Try again later, it'll be back online soon."
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2015, @09:09AM
> I did what any physicist would do. I fired up MATLAB, and started building my model.
Turns out Python is becoming the scripting language of choice for most physicists. Excellent support for linear algebra (numpy), plotting (matplotlib), other algorithms (scipy)... also the high energy physicists have done some good work porting their C analysis framework to python (ROOT/PyRoot/RootPy)