Happy National Singles Week. Did you know that Operation Match, the first example computer matchmaking, took place in 1965?

Behold, a fascinating article in the The New York Times by Ian Ayres about Super Crunchers, which focuses on the matching systems that power eHarmony, PerfectMatch, True and Yahoo! Personals.

This is the best overview of how dating sites match members that I’ve ever read in the MSM (mainstream media). Learn about wisdom of crowds, regression and Myers-Briggs testing. See how dating sites hide the details of their matching systems as closely as the Coke recipe.

Eharmony comes under a fairly strenuous attack towards the end of the piece, which is taken from a book by the same name. Steven Levitt, the co-author of Freakonomics, praises the book, which means I’m buying Super Crunchers right after I hit the publish button.

The article quotes True.com’s chief psychologist James Houran, but James hasn’t worked at True in several years. I noticed several other inconsistencies but thats what happens when you kill trees and put ink on them. I wonder if Super Crunchers has an errata website?

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