Online Dating: A
Big Dater Analysis
With Phyo, Eric, Lainey, and Jordan
Intro to Online Dating
• Why is online dating important?
– Internet use widespread
– Online dating community growing
• What is the question?
– How does online dating compare to
traditional dating?
OkCupid Data
• Full Public Profile information
in 2012
• Limited to San Francisco Bay Area
• Aggregate data on 59946 profiles
– e.g. age, income, ethnicity, icebreaker
essays
– similar to Big Data challenges
Cleaning up Cupid
• We collated daters with multiple
ethnicities into the “mixed race” group
• For simplicity, sorted into income brackets
(as defined in Pew data)
• Missing values and annual income of “-1”
turned into NA
• Profile essays parsed for Sentiment
values
Income Distribution
80% did not report income
Relevance to General
Population
• Can extrapolate to nationwide OkCupid
users
• Probably not applicable to online sites in
general (Farmers Only, Tinder)
• What people to expect online in San
Francisco area
– Young, non-white, claim to be richer
Pew Data 2013
• Phone survey
• 2252 observations across US
– e.g. age, income, satisfaction with life,
view of online dating, online dating use
– smaller data
Cleaning up Pew
• Cast 8(Don’t know) and 9(Refuse) to NA
• Split ages into brackets of 10 years
• Matched states by FIPS codes
National Quality of Life
(Pew 2013)
Income Distribution
18% did not report
Happiness
Breakdow
n
by
Dating
Style
Have you ever flirted with someone online?
(Pew 2013)
Relevance to General
Population
• How general population perceives online
daters (not hate)
• Cross-sectional view of people who date
online
• How similar are the perceptions and
reality?
Overall Data Connections
• How closely does the Pew data
(nationwide) match the OkCupid data
(subgroup)
• Where is it different? (we have some
answers)
• Why is it different? (difficult to answer)
Dating Ethnicity On/Offline
(Proportional from both sets)
What can we learn about Online
Dating?
•
•
•
•
Prevalence of online dating (a little)
Prevalence of internet use (a lot!)
Is online dating better?
Are people who date online happier
(nope)
• Are they more successful in their
relationships?
One Block More
• Drill down on dating outcomes
• Create typical profile for OKCupid
• Compare California to California
End