Online Dating

Clinton vs. Trump Supporters on Match.com

Dating (The Love Hawk)

Earlier this year, Match.com released its annual Singles in America study. The study surveyed 5K+ singles ages 18-70 in 2015 on a variety of subjects pertinent to those who date. The results are fascinating, in no small part because Donald Trump was still a sideshow attraction and not a full-blown potential threat at the time.

Without further ado, here are some findings:

Clinton supporters are:

70% more likely to discuss politics
102% more likely to lie about their number of past sexual partners
2,133% more likely to expect no physical contact

Trump supporters are:

82% more likely to be unemployed
116% more likely to talk about an ex
1,104% more likely to expect sex on the first date

But some benefits are bi-partisan, as the press release touts:

Individuals who are passionate about political issues (regardless of their affiliation) have better sex, with 13% more orgasms; they are also 32% more likely to experience multiple orgasms.

If that’s not a good reason to get politically involved/educated (or fuck across the aisle, at the very least), I don’t know what is.

Tinder Usage Up 129% Among Athletes at the Rio Summer Olympics

Rio Olympics 2016 (Indian Express)

By now, it’s common knowledge that Olympic athletes hook up during their time in the Olympic Village. And naturally, one way to facilitate this is via dating apps. Specifically, Tinder has proved to be the number one choice for Olympic athletes looking to get laid.

Over the first weekend of this year’s Olympics, Tinder usage spiked a whopping 129% amongst the athletes. Impressive, right? But the data is incomplete.

This is the second Olympics where Tinder has made a splash. During the Sochi Olympics in 2014, it was reported that mobile dating usage surged, and that Tinder was the app of choice. However, since this is solely anecdotal evidence, no numbers have been reported so that we can’t gauge the size of said surge. And we cannot make any year-over-year comparisons of the growth.

Another issue is that, yes, Tinder usage is up 129% among athletes, but to what are we comparing the activity? Are we comparing to the usage data to the previous Summer Olympics (which would be London in 2012) or the most recent Olympics (the aforementioned Sochi)?

Though the number raises a few questions, it’s pretty entertaining to realize that elite athletes are just like the rest of us.

Match.com Singles in America Data 2016: By The Numbers

Singles in America study header (Match.com)

Man, I love delving into user data from websites (though I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now). Match.com recently released the results of their sixth annual “Singles In America” survey. You can find all their findings on their microsite. Let’s take a look at what insights came to light:

Number of singles surveyed: 5.5K+

Percentage that sushi increases your odds of getting a second date: 170% (!!)

First-date length correlation with second-date chances diagram (Match.com)

Number of men who expect sex on the first date: 6%

Percentage of Millennials likely to have filmed sex: 165% (!)

Orgasms data visualization (Match.com)

Percentage that using the phrase “Netflix and chill” gets you a second date: 99%

Percentage that using the phrase “on fleek” gets you a second date: -26%

OKCupid Data of 2015: By The Numbers

OkCupid logo (IAC)

I love it when online dating sites share their data. You can tell a lot about a person, or people as a group, by what they’re willing to admit to on the Internet.

I’ve picked out the most interesting facts, but you can see the full report for yourself.

State with the most users looking for casual sex: Oregon (15.51%)

State with most users who are (admitted) virgins: Utah (19.78%)

Percentage of people interested in participating in bondage: 58%

Year-over-year increase from 2014: +5%

Percentage of users who masturbate at least a few times a week: 51.3%

OkCupid ‘The Hangover’ 2016 Emoji Data (OkCupid)

Average number of questions a user answers: 125

Percentage of overall users not down with interracial marriage: 3%

Percentage of users in Mississippi not down with interracial marriage: 18%

Percentage of users who said they’d date a transgender person: 25%

Year-over-year change from 2014: +5%

And lastly, the most important stat of all:

OkCupid ‘The Hangover 2016’ Pop Culture Data (OkCupid)

Two Suicides Linked to Ashley Madison Hack

Ashley Madison homepage (Ashley Madison)

We’re beginning to see some fallout from the Ashley Madison hack from earlier this month: Police in Toronto, Canada, have reported two suicides related to the hack, and are undertaking further investigation of the cases.

Reports of the number of Ashley Madison’s users range from 30M+ to 37M+. With those numbers in mind, these two suicides constitute between .00000006% and .000000054% of the site’s total registered users whose data was leaked in the security breach.

I’m curious to see how the hack continues to affect its outed users and those close to them.

Ashley Madison Hackers Post the Site’s User Data

Ashley Madison homepage (Ashley Madison)

Happy Friday! Remember when cheating site Ashley Madison was hacked last month? And how the hackers threatened to release user data to the whole Internet?

Well, they’ve finally done it. The Impact Team, as the group of hackers is known, put the data online on the Dark Web, which can only be reached using specialized equipment. They dumped a jaw-dropping 9.7 GigaBytes (GBs) of data that went back to 2008.

(For context/scale, I have a 4 TeraByte (TB) external hard drive that I keep old school projects and work on. I’ve had that thing for over 6 years, and still haven’t filled it up. One TB is equal to .001 GBs. So you can imagine how voluminous this data breach truly is.)

There seems to be some disagreement over exactly how many users had data leaked. “CNN Money” claims 32M, while “Wired” and “Engadget” put the number closer to 37M.

As of July, Ashley Madison claimed to have 40M+ users.

Ashley Madison data dump (Gizmodo)

Among the metrics leaked were users’ names, addresses and phone numbers. “Wired” looked into some initial data analysis:

A sampling of the data indicates that users likely provided random numbers and addresses, but files containing credit card transactions will yield real names and addresses, unless members of the site used anonymous pre-paid cards. One analysis of email addresses found in the data dump also shows that some 15,000 are .mil. or .gov addresses.

Passwords were broken by “hashing,” or breaking into the algorithm a site would use to protect passwords. The hackers used the “bcrypt” algorithm used in web development language PHP. This is usually a secure measure to protect passwords. But hey, at least Ashley Madison tried:

It’s notable, however, that the cheating site, in using the secure hashing algorithm, surpassed many other victims of breaches we’ve seen over the years who never bothered to encrypt customer passwords.

Have a great weekend, and go change your passwords!

Sex & Stats: Where Numbers Come to Bang

Statistics. Economics. Sex.