All’s equal in love and math: a look behind dating site OkCupid

Photo By Kim De Guzman/The Chameleon. OkCupid.com is the "fastest growing free online dating site." The website uses a special mathematical algorithm to match people together.

By Kim De Guzman
Editor-in-Chief

I love a lot of things about spring: a) I won’t see snow for another eight-ish months, b) I can wear shorts/dresses again, and c) nice weather puts me in a better mood.

Another thing I enjoy about spring is the prospect of spring romance. Nice weather makes hormones come out in full swing, and the mundanity of schoolwork makes us students feel restless and lonely for a social life again.

Not to mention the fact that guys and girls wear less clothes in spring and that seriously pumps up our libido.

There are many ways to find spring romance prospects, like a bar, the beach, or a party.

But come on. We are in the information age. What other way to find a date/fling/relationship/whatever label you choose to attach it to it, than an online dating site?

These sites, like datemyschool.com, are becoming more popular amongst students nowadays.

Over the past few weeks, I have been hearing a lot about this website: OkCupid.

OkCupid tags itself as “the best dating site on Earth.”

According to their official website, OkCupid is “the fastest growing online dating site. We use math to get you dates. It’s extremely accurate, as long as (a) you’re honest, and (b) you know what you want.”

OkCupid facilitates both heterosexual and same-sex relationships. The website contains many various forms of communication, like public forums, instant messages, and emails.

The dating site was founded by Chris Coyne, Max Krohn, Christian Rudder, and Sam Yagan.

It turns out Coyne, Yagan, and Krohn previously played a part in developing other popular websites. Ever hear of SparkNotes and TheSpark.com? Yep, they were masterminds behind that leading brand of educational study aids.

Now they’ve switched gears to play matchmaker with OkCupid.

I had a chance to check out the site the other night when I was hanging with a friend.

To generate matches, OkCupid uses a special algorithm that applies data coming from a user’s site activities, as well as a user’s answers to questions.

While we were playing around on the site, we realized that we could use specific keywords as filters within our matches.

After searching different keywords and results (like majors, neighborhoods), we plugged in the phrase, “Loyola University Chicago.”

I didn’t believe any results would come up.

There were results all right.

I won’t go into detail about the different results that came up but I saw profiles of people who I’ve seen on campus, people who have graduated from Loyola, and even people who work at different university facilities.

If anything, it’s pretty entertaining. And you can ogle virtually at people you would see on campus.

Normally, I wouldn’t be inclined to spend time on dating websites. Especially one that uses math, (a subject I absolutely detest), to match people together.

But I must admit, OkCupid is worth checking out, no matter if you’re looking for a short-term/long-term relationship, someone new to talk to, a friend, or even just another way to procrastinate on that research paper due in two hours.

Kim De Guzman is the editor-in-chief. She can be reached at editorinchief@luchameleon.com. She may or may not have made her own OkCupid account after writing this article.