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Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

The success rate of a eHarmony.com would seem to disagree with you. In fact I’d argue that the field of mathematics in general disagrees with you. Time and time we find that mathematics can determine things that we never dreamed it could. Things like “game theory” prove that the deeper we delve into statistical analysis the more we are able to determine what someone will and won’t do. I’m not saying its ever going to be 100% accurate but if we can determine that x guy and y girl live happily ever after 85% of the time if they share z traits that still gives us the ability to match people far more successfully than we do now.

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The success of their marketing or of actually getting people hooked up? If they were so successful then they'd lose all of their customers because they would no longer need the site...

> I’m not saying its ever going to be 100% accurate but if we can determine that x guy and y girl live happily ever after 85% of the time if they share z traits that still gives us the ability to match people far more successfully than we do now.

Go ahead and even begin to try to find data to back up that big assumption. No metric with such high correlation exists. This is my point.

Well, I guess my question to you would be: What would prove it to you?

The position you seem to have taken right now is that you believe no metric exists and no matter who says there is one you won't believe it.

eHarmony has shown several reporters verifiable numbers proving 90 member every day. I've never heard anyone dispute that claim. The only dispute is what percentage of their members that actually represents. But lets say its a pathetically small percentage, 20% or so.

The fact that they've achieved even limited success seems to indicate that the idea has merit and that refinement of that idea could yield better results.

That's a theory backed up by mathematics. In the end relationships are just two people choosing to join together and stick with each other which means a discipline such as game theory which has been shown to effectively predict the future actions of people could be a prototype for predicting relationship success. Because staying in a relationship with someone is just a behavior.

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