Tag: data

For McKinlay’s plan to work, he’d have to find a pattern in the survey data—a way to roughly group the women according to their similarities. The breakthrough came when he coded up a modified Bell Labs algorithm called K-Modes. First used in 1998 to analyze diseased soybean crops, it takes categorical data and clumps it like the colored wax swimming in a Lava Lamp. With some fine-tuning he could adjust the viscosity of the results, thinning it into a slick or coagulating it into a single, solid glob. He played with the dial and found a natural resting point where the 20,000 women clumped into seven statistically distinct clusters based on their questions and answers. “I was ecstatic,” he says. “That was the high point of June.” […] Most unsuccessful daters confront self-esteem issues. For McKinlay it was worse. He had to question his calculations. […] “I think that what I did is just a slightly more algorithmic, large-scale, and machine-learning-based version of what everyone does on the site,” McKinlay says. Everyone tries to create an optimal profile—he just had the data to engineer one.

How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love – Wired Science

I’m not sure if I should be awestruck or creeped out.

The most enjoyable part of this story is that for all the advantages McKinlay has over most daters thanks to his math prowess, once it gets to the point of live interaction with another human he is back on equal footing.

Download my travel-time map

I am a bit nervous about doing this, but since several people asked, here goes: You can now download the travel-time map of the Netherlands I made in Processing. I have exported applications for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. Each download includes the source files, but not the data file. For that, you will need to head to Alper’s site (he’s the guy who pulled the data from 9292 and ANWB). I hope you’ll enjoy playing around with this, or learn something from the way it was put together.

Some notes, in no particular order:

  • Please remember I am not a programmer. The vast majority of this sketch was put together from bits and pieces of code I found in books and online. I have tried to credit all the sources in the code. The full write-up I posted earlier should point you to all the sources too. In short; all the good bits are by other people, the bad code is mine. But who cares, it’s the end-result that counts (at least for me).
  • Related to the previous point is the fact that I cannot figure out under which license (if any) to release this. So the usual CC by-nc-sa license applies, as far as I’m concerned.
  • If this breaks your computer, offends you, makes you cry, or eats your kittens, do not come knocking. This is provided as is, no warranties whatsoever, etc.
  • Why am I nervous? Probably because for me the point of the whole exercise was the process, not the outcome.
  • I can’t think of anything else. Have fun.