Love by numbers

Summary

---

More or Less – “Love by Numbers”

BBC Radio 4, February 15, 2014
Host: Tim Harford

---

Episode Overview

This Valentine’s Day-inspired episode of More or Less examines whether love can be found—and even optimized—by analyzing the numbers behind dating. Host Tim Harford explores the “market forces” of speed dating with economist Michelle Ballot, and unpacks online dating strategies with data-driven love seeker Amy Webb. The episode blends humor, real-world experiments, and statistical insights to tackle the age-old question: is there a formula for love?

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Speed Dating Marketplace

• Introduction to Speed Dating (00:44–01:25)
  • Tim Harford introduces the format of speed dating, where singles have quick, four-minute interactions to assess mutual interest.
  • Charlotte, a producer, attends a London speed dating event to report back.
  • "[Speed dating] is a more efficient way of meeting single people than hoping to bump into someone in everyday life." (Charlotte, 02:46)
• How It Works (01:43–01:47)
  • Each date lasts four minutes.
  • Participants note who they’re interested in on a scorecard, then log their choices online to see if there is mutual interest.

2. The Economics & Statistics of Speed Dating

• Gender Differences in Selectivity (03:11–03:33)

  • Economist Michelle Ballot analyzed 84 UK speed dating events:
    • "Men choose many more women than women do. So women choose on average two men, while men choose on average five women out of 22." (Michelle Ballot, 03:23)
  • Women’s offers have a ~50% chance of reciprocation; men’s offers, only a 20% chance.

• Women Are “Pickier”—And Why (03:53–04:05)

  • “So women are pickier than men, but what are they looking for?” (Tim Harford, 04:03)
  • “Both for men and women, education and professional status matters... Women prefer taller men and men prefer slimmer women.” (Michelle Ballot, 04:05)

• Adjusting Standards to the Market (04:36–04:58)

  • Participants adapt their standards based on the “pool” available at each event:
    • "People seem to be actually adjusting to the opportunities that are available. It seems that they lower the standards." (Michelle Ballot, 04:36)
  • Example: If fewer attractive people are present, individuals recalibrate their expectations accordingly.

• Real-Life Example (04:48–05:20)

  • Charlotte shares her experience: she picked one man out of the group; four men chose her.

3. Data, Algorithms, and Online Dating (05:26–08:47)

Amy Webb’s Data-Driven Quest for Love

• The Problem with Matchmaking Algorithms (06:12–06:23)

  • Amy Webb, self-described “data and digital strategy” expert, finds dating site algorithms mismatched her with incompatible men.
    • "One of the things that I quickly realized was that the dating sites ask us questions about ourselves, but they don't ask us questions about who exactly we're looking for." (Amy Webb, 06:23)

• Building a Personal Matching System (06:23–07:00)

  • Amy makes a list of 72 desired qualities, assigns point values, and sets a “minimum threshold” score (700 points).
  • “I would not go out with a man unless he met that minimum threshold.” (Amy Webb, 06:59)

• Reverse-Engineering the Competition (07:17–07:48)

  • After initial setbacks, Amy creates a male profile to analyze factors making other women popular.
    • Short, upbeat profiles work better; positive, simple language ("fun," "happy") outperformed long, humorous blurbs.
    • Profile photos matter: popular women chose carefully chosen, slightly revealing photos.

• Profile Optimization and Success (08:11–08:47)

  • Amy revises her approach:
    • “The goal was for me to present a version of myself that was truthful, but that was going to be competitive, given who else was there.”
    • "Once I did that, it was the most popular I've ever been...I did find a guy who...scored over 700 points. And eventually we went out on what became my last ever first date. And he's the one that I married." (Amy Webb, 08:11–08:47)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "So women are pickier than men, but what are they looking for?"
  Tim Harford (04:03)

• "Both for men and women, education and professional status matters ... Women prefer taller men and men prefer slimmer women."
  Michelle Ballot, Economist (04:05)

• "People seem to be actually adjusting to the opportunities that are available. It seems that they lower the standards."
  Michelle Ballot (04:36)

• "One of the things that I quickly realized was that the dating sites ask us questions about ourselves, but they don't ask us questions about who exactly we're looking for."
  Amy Webb (06:23)

• "Once I did [optimize my profile], it was the most popular I've ever been ... And eventually we went out on what became my last ever first date. And he's the one that I married."
  Amy Webb (08:11–08:47)

---

Key Timestamps

• 00:17 — Tim Harford introduces the episode
• 01:14 — Charlotte goes speed dating
• 03:11 — Michelle Ballot discusses gender differences in selectivity
• 04:36 — Ballot on adjusting standards
• 06:12 — Amy Webb's online dating challenges
• 07:17 — Amy's competitive analysis and profile insights
• 08:47 — Amy Webb finds love

---

Episode Takeaways

• Speed dating and online interactions provide rich data for analyzing the “dating market.”
• Statistically, women are more selective than men; both value education, but physical preferences still shape choices.
• People dynamically adjust what they’re looking for based on who’s available.
• Applying data analysis and strategic thinking—to both one’s own preferences and how one presents oneself—can dramatically improve one’s odds of success in love, at least online.

---

For more episodes and content, visit bbcworldservice.com/moreorless.

---

Transcript

[Charlotte]

This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.

[BBC Announcer]

Thank you for downloading from the BBC. For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, go to bbcworldservice.com podcasts

[Tim Harford]

hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. I'm Tim Harford. This week, inspired by the romantic celebrations of Valentine's Day, we ask whether it's possible to find love by analyzing the numbers.

[Amy Webb]

I wasn't having any luck online dating, so rather than using conventional methods, I decided instead to try to use some digital strategy and a little math to see if I could reverse engineer the entire system.

[Tim Harford]

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Before we try the online world, let's first take a look at a brutal method of face to face courting. Speed dating. Where a number of singles come to an event in a bar or similar. The men move from table to table to have a fleeting date with each woman. Some economists are excited about speed dating events because they're perfect for observing market forces at work. In this case, the dating market. There was only one reporter we could send, Charla MacDonald.

[Charlotte]

Obviously, because of my data skills and unique understanding of the human condition.

[Tim Harford]

No, because you're the only person on the more or less team who likes talking to strange men in bars.

[Dani]

Hello, ladies and gents.

[Charlotte]

Good evening.

[Dani]

Welcome to tonight's speed data event. My name is Dani. I'm here to host tonight along with Stacy. So if you do have any questions,

[Charlotte]

I've come down to a bar in central London to check out this speed dating event. Not quite sure what to expect.

[Dani]

So ladies will stay seated, guys will rotate.

[Charlotte]

And how long do you have per date?

[Dani]

So four minutes per date.

[Charlotte]

And so what happens afterwards?

[Dani]

So after the event you take the scorecard home with you and then everyone's going to log online from tomorrow to then enter in their tics. So if you like someone, you tick them online and then you see if they tick you back. So you'll see your matches. Hello.

[Charlotte]

Hello, I'm Charlotte. By the end of the night, how many people do you think roughly you might, you know, tick a bop and go.

[Dani]

Yes, yes, I'll go.

[Tim Harford]

Is depends on personality, which I think attractive as the ladies are here.

[Charlotte]

So on attractiveness, they're doing all right?

[Tim Harford]

Yes, I'd say So, yeah. Probably 50.

[Charlotte]

50, maybe 50% are quite attractive.

[Dani]

Yeah.

[Tim Harford]

Reasonably attractive.

[Amy Webb]

What do you look for in a woman? An educated person, driven.

[Charlotte]

When you go to speed dating event, have you ever been to one and you've selected nobody?

[Amy Webb]

No.

[Charlotte]

So there's always been someone you thought, yeah, I want to meet again. Yeah.

[Tim Harford]

Charlotte is now safely back in the office. Charlotte, how was speed dating?

[Charlotte]

It's quite surreal. I guess it's a more efficient way of meeting single people than hoping to bump into someone in everyday life.

[Tim Harford]

I suppose it is, but also it's highly efficient for economists as well. We get to look at a ton of data without the need for, you know, the periscopes, the directional microphones, the private detectives, that sort of thing. So we get to see the choices that people make about whom they want to see more of.

[Michelle Ballot]

Men and women have quite a different behavior in these settings.

[Tim Harford]

This is Michelle Ballot. She's an economist from the University of Edinburgh and she and a colleague analyzed data from 84 speed dating events in the UK, which is an awful lot of four minute dates.

[Michelle Ballot]

Men choose many more women than women do. So women choose on average two men, while men choose on average five women out of 22.

[Tim Harford]

And that's good news for the women. It means that for every offer a woman makes, she has almost a 50, 50 chance that the man will want to see her again too. But for every offer a man makes, he has only a 1 in 5 chance that the desire to meet again is reciprocated.

[Charlotte]

Okay, so that's interesting because at my event I ummed and ah'd, but finally decided just one person I'd actually want to go on a further date with. But there were four men who would have been happy to go on a proper date with me. Now that seems to be kind of consistent with what Michelle's saying.

[Tim Harford]

So women are pickier than men, but what are they looking for?

[Michelle Ballot]

Both for men and women, education and professional status matters. So people prefer people who are more educated and have a better professional status. We found that women prefer taller men and men prefer slimmer women.

[Tim Harford]

Perhaps that's not a big surprise, but look, it's a market out there. What happens if one night you go speed dating and there are slim pickings of the type of people that you prefer? For instance, perhaps you want to date someone with a PhD and everybody at the speed dating evening is a high school dropout.

[Michelle Ballot]

We find that people seem to adjust to the pool of participants they encounter. It's not necessarily the case that you would say, oh, the pool of candidates seem to be less attractive tonight, so people won't make proposals? No, people seem to be actually adjusting to the opportunities that are available. It seems that they lower the standards.

[Tim Harford]

So if a woman likes Tall men. But she goes speed dating one night and feels like she's on the set of the Hobbit. She'll lower her expectations on that occasion and instead pick men who next best fit her criteria of what she's looking for. Now, Charlotte, tell me there was one man you would have been happy to date. Now, was he one of the four people who were happy to date you?

[Charlotte]

No, Tim. But he did say he would be my friend.

[Tim Harford]

That must be some comfort.

[Charlotte]

No, not really.

[Tim Harford]

Cheer up, Charlotte. You mustn't lose your faith in the power of numbers, because they are the path to true love. For the next four minutes, we're going to hear from Amy Webb. And she isn't a speed dater. She tried online dating instead.

[Amy Webb]

My story begins several years ago. I had just turned 30, and I was really eager to find a lifetime partner. Now, from my point of view, because I work with data and digital strategy for a living, online dating made perfect sense. It's a scenario where you put information about yourself into a system. That information is put through an algorithm and. And on the other end, a match is made.

[Tim Harford]

Unfortunately, Amy found the dating website wasn't making very good match suggestions. For example, she hates sports, and it was pairing her up with men whose favorite pastime was golf.

[Amy Webb]

One of the things that I quickly realized was that the dating sites ask us questions about ourselves, but they don't ask us questions about who exactly we're looking for. I decided to try to come up with my own system. And so what I did first was I came up with a list of every single possible quality that I could think of to want in a man. I came up with 72 different points. I took those 72 data points, and I prioritized them. I then had to go through and apply some math and come up with a scoring system. And essentially what I did was I created a minimum threshold of points, and I would not go out with a man unless he met that minimum threshold.

[Tim Harford]

Amy set her threshold around 700 points. And clearly the criteria must have included must love nerdy number crunchers. Anyway, Amy now had a way to rate men according to what she wanted. She then went back online and applied her scoring system to the men on the dating sites.

[Amy Webb]

There, using my own sort of algorithm, I actually did quite well. I immediately found a guy who was perfect. The problem was that this perfect guy didn't want to go out with me. And it occurred to me that maybe I hadn't really thought about my competition. And so I went back into the site, I logged in as a man, I did a statistical analysis of the competition to try to understand what made those women popular, and after a month I had collected enough data and that allowed me to draw some conclusions.

[Tim Harford]

So while pretending to be a man, she'd been analyzing what the most popular women were doing. They kept the blurb on their profile short. While she had been wordy, she used humor. Yet the popular women used more neutral, positive words like fun and happy a lot. While Amy hadn't put much thought into her photos, the popular women had clearly carefully chosen pictures that showed a bit of flesh.

[Amy Webb]

I then redid my own profile. The goal was for me to present a version of myself that was truthful, but that was going to be competitive, given who else was there. Once I did that, it was the most popular I've ever been in my entire life. Suddenly there were all these men that wanted to go out with me. I went through again and applied my scoring system, and then I did find a guy who, based on his profile alone, had scored over 700 points. And eventually we went out on what became my last ever first date. And he's the one that I married.

[Tim Harford]

Amy Webb, author of Data A Love Story With Valentine's Day Inspiration for us all, true love lurks under the surface of every spreadsheet. If there are any numbers you'd like us to check or explain, do please email [e-mail] and you can download this program and many others for free at our website, bbcworldservice.com moreorless

[BBC Announcer]

there are dozens of different podcasts now available from the BBC, including news, documentaries, science, business, arts and sport. For details of them all, go to bbcworldservice.com podcasts.