The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Using Math to Find Love on OkCupid with Chris Mcinklay

Chris Mckinlay’s disparate career path has led to working as a Chinese- English translator, playing team blackjack, and eventually a math PHD program at UCLA. The perfect real world scenario to test the the knowledge gained from his math PHD was OkCupid. And using math to hack OkCupid eventually led to meeting the love of his life.

A look at an unconventional college experience in China
Why intentional discomfort is instrumental to growth
How to deal with the feeling that you don’t fit in
The realities of survival in other parts of the world
Learning to reorient your life in order to find meaning
Life as a professional blackjack player
Using a painful experience as a powerful opportunity for growth
Learning to see connections and patterns in your work
The myths that technology will drastically improve your life
Balancing the qualitative and quantitative elements of dating
Hilarious online dating anecdotes and things to avoid
How Chris’ appearance on Wired led to other opportunities

Resources Mentioned

How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find Love

Chris Mcinklay has a PhD in Mathematics from UCLA.

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Duration:: 1h 14m
Broadcast on:: 30 Apr 2014
Audio Format:: other

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Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous to your contracts, they said, "What the f*ck are you talking about? You insane Hollywood f*ck." So to recap, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes in detail. In this episode of The Unmistakable Creative, I speak with Chris McKinley. Chris's disparate career path has led to working as a Chinese English translator playing Team Blackjack at eventually a math PhD program at UCLA. The perfect real world scenario to test out the knowledge gained from his math PhD turned out to be OK Cupid and using math to hack OK Cupid eventually led to meeting the love of his life. Chris, welcome to The Unmistakable Creative. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. So I came across your story by a way of a wired article on how a math genius hacked OK Cupid to find true love. And I saw that and I thought, OK, this has got to be a really fascinating person. I read the article and parts of it made me laugh out loud and I thought this would be a hell of a story to tell here on The Unmistakable Creative. So I'm going to ask you my first question, which is, can you tell us a bit about your background, your story, yourself, and how that has led to this crazy thing that we as the internet, the world know you for today? Yeah, sure. Well, let's see. You know, I grew up in like New England, right, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire. I went to like, kind of stuffy boarding school, didn't fit in that well, got on the internet like pretty early, relatively speaking, you know, like 93, 94 originally by like sneaking in to, you know, like the high school computer lab at night. And I would like pretend to be a, you know, 16, 17 year old girl on these, like, I don't even know if you know what a bulletin board system is. Yeah. So I'd pretend to be a girl on these things and like get guys to send me, you know, like free like slayer t-shirts and metallic albums and stuff like that. So I started getting in trouble, got suspended a couple times for messing around with databases that wasn't supposed to, you know, in school, didn't go to MIT. I did go to HIT, which stands for Harbin Institute of Technology, which is Harbin China, which like Bumpuck, Siberia, really, you know, cold city, burned a lot of coal for water, you know, in the dorm I lived in, occasionally they'd run out of coal and have to burn like styrofoam for water. Super crowded, like I lived in a dorm room with seven other guys, you know, so any given time, there's like a reasonably high probability that one of them was masturbating. You know, put porn very difficult to get in China in the late 90s. This one guy I knew in school actually retasked a radio antenna on top of the physics building to get Korean softcore, you know, so like actually I'm still in touch with some of those guys and, you know, they read the article and they weren't really impressed, you know. They were like, that's cool, that's cool, how are you doing? So yeah, then I went to grad school at UCLA and I, you know, wrote a dissertation on using high throughput architectures to, you know, implement like throughput oriented tensor compaction algorithms, blah, blah, blah, I guess I was able to hold down a relationship in grad school and for a year, but I think it felt more like a study break to her. And so she moved to Paris and, you know, emailed me and said, you know, hey, Chris, I met someone else, you know, I'm sorry, but, you know, he's an older French artist. And then she said, you know, if you want to see what my life is like, now you should watch a last tango in Paris. So I did and then I did the only rational thing to me at the time, which was, you know, I packed up my whole apartment, I put it in storage, and then I moved into my study cubicle in school full time, and, you know, slept like on a mattress on my desk at night. And I was actually not the only person in the department doing that. There were several Chinese grad students doing that also. So it sort of felt like I was back in Harbin, except that it was warmer and the, you didn't have to try so hard to get porn if you wanted to. So, yeah, I mean, in a nutshell, that was my life prior to that article, I guess. Okay, interesting. So a couple of questions around that. I mean, you know, I love that you brought this idea of not fitting in, which, you know, that's an ongoing theme, I think, for anybody who somehow finds themselves behind the mic with me is that they didn't fit in in some way. And I guess, you know, it's funny, because I think we feel that as kids pretty regularly, and it manifests in different ways. And sometimes we don't know how to deal with that in adult life. And I'm just curious, you know, based on kind of what you've been through it and your own experiences, you know, how we how we deal with that in adult life and how we manifest it in a way that is not, you know, counterproductive for us. Yeah, I mean, I think I guess you get as many different answers to that question than you have people. Yeah, exactly. You know, for me, I think it's really important that I stay true to, you know, my own principles and do what I think is important for me and what, you know, interests me always. And, you know, I think sometimes that's like, you know, it's not like what my family like wants to hear or, you know, it's not necessarily what'll make the most money or it's the most conventional, but it's invariably the thing that, you know, I get the most satisfaction out of. So, you know, like I was writing this dissertation in school and I got kind of stuck and I was just really not happy. I didn't like doing it. I was about halfway through it and I started kind of procrastinating a lot. And, you know, that's when I got on OKCupid, you know, kind of more and more. And I, at some point, I realized that the tools I was using in this dissertation would apply to OKCupid. I was trying to cluster high dimensional data and OKCupid is like, you know, it's a multiple choice-based dating website. So you go online and you like answer a bunch of multiple choice questions and you can choose which questions you answer. And then based on your answers to those questions and a couple other factors, it generates like a match percentage with you and for every other user on the site. And that number is subject to lots of different like mathematical inputs and so it's it's optimizable in a dozen different ways. So to me that immediately was a more interesting problem in my dissertation. All right, so there's a lot of stuff there. That we're going to probably spend the majority of our time talking about because I think that's what really kind of drew me into the whole story. I want to talk a little bit about your time in China only because it's such an unusual college experience to go to that. You mentioned going there instead of going to MIT. And I guess for me, one of the things that I'm always very curious about is how our past experiences shape the way our life turns out and the way our world view becomes. I'm curious, how studying there really influenced the work that you've done, how it led to sort of what you've done with your PhD. And I mean in general, how did that kind of an experience sort of shape an influence your world view differently than it might have if you had gone to college in the United States? Well, let's see, I spent a little over a year there, so I did go to college in the United States on the East Coast. But there's a huge difference between the two experiences. My experience in the US was highly privileged, beautiful campus meticulously kept up by like labor populated with like smiling like Caucasian faces with like zero perception of like a world in which they don't have this as a birthright. And my experience in China was one of like gray sort of monolithic, malted known era communist architecture like really, really smart Chinese students from all over the country generally from like very poor families who are very aware of like how precarious their situation is, and like very driven to be the one who you know, wins the lottery and you know kind of like makes it out. Very little like wiggle room for things like whatever, you know, drugs, sex, like road ribs, you know, stuff like that just doesn't exist. It's an interesting cultural perspective, isn't it? I mean, you know, having grown up in Indian family, I mean, I've butted heads with my parents about sort of, hey, you know, why do you discourage living a creative life? Why do you think that everything has to be so certain? But I mean, it took me a long time to see that, you know, as I thought about it more and more, you know, in that kind of an environment, you know, the sort of culture of the web of, you know, quit your job, do what you love, travel the world, all that nonsense. It really is nonsense when you come from a situation like that because I look at, you know, what the consequences are a failure for somebody in a situation like the one you're talking about. I mean, even when I look back at my parents, I realize now why it's so difficult for them to get, you know, their head around, hey, you know, here's this uncertain thing that I'm molding from something that doesn't exist is because in that kind of a culture, the consequences of that are not, hey, you might, you know, end up failing. You might have a bit of shame. The consequences of that are you're going to end up on the street and those are actually very real consequences. It's not, you know, the worst case scenario. It is actually a realistic possibility that you're going to end up in a disastrous situation. And that's, it's interesting that we, it's very hard, I think, for us to get that in the culture that we live in today. I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's, that totally resonates with me. And that's the situation, you know, for most of the world. It's just America doesn't like see it, you know, it's not like a story that we listen to. Very often. I think the median yearly income in the world is in US dollars, about 10,000 a year, you know, so 50% of the world makes less than 10 gs a year. And you know, for a country like America, whose lifestyle is predicated on, you know, the world's largest per capita consumption of oil and other fossil fuels for energy. It's, you know, the kind of like liberal arts experience and like sort of, you know, 2.2 career changes per life, like guaranteed high-speed internet access, social media, like everything that we sort of take is like a foundational part of our world is like really an extreme sort of upper crust like privilege, you know, that doesn't exist in most places in the world and probably won't exist in most places of the world, you know. And so I think for people like your parents, you know, who like presumably immigrated to the US from India. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they like, I mean, they, they like fought tooth and nail to like make better opportunities for themselves and their children. And then, you know, there's, it's, it's almost like a, there's like a sort of archetype that surrounds the immigrant experience. Like your kids speak the language, the new language much better than you do. And they like, you know, grow up in this new place with values that are a bit different than yours and it causes some frictions, right? Yeah. I didn't have the benefit of it and I think there is a lot of benefit to that experience for the kids. You know, and I, I didn't have that because, you know, my parents grew up here as well, but I think I sort of constructed it for myself a little bit, you know, by like insisting on going to this kind of dystopian place and, and like trying to have in my own like kind of 19 year old misguided way of like a real experience instead of like a, let's go to France experience, you know, let me ask you this. I mean, when you were younger, you know, especially college, did you know that, you know, where you were headed was a math PhD or is that something that basically came about based on experience and based on kind of, you know, the, the things that have happened in your life? Yeah, it, it came about the long way. I mean, I was, I was, I was really good at math, but I was on a really weird trip, you know, I didn't fit in that wall in college and, you know, I ended up getting a degree in Chinese language, you know, with like a, a minor in math. And after I graduated, I moved to New York City in like January, 2001 was really broke, living in like, you know, 109th Street and Broadway. And I started doing contract based translation from Mandarin to English. So I just translate like legal documents, diplomas, just random little things. And it, it was just kind of stressful job, really boring, like most of my competitors were, you know, like Taiwanese Americans with law degrees from universities in Taiwan. So translating legal documents for them was like a five minute affair. You know, it was, for me, it was like a 90 hour, like, like hair pulling sort of, you know, dictionary flipping like nightmare. And I did that for about six months. I actually, I worked, or my, the company I worked for was based out of the World Trade Center. It was on the 91st floor of the North Tower. And yeah, I would go in there, usually a couple of days a week in the afternoon for meetings. And I had a meeting scheduled in the afternoon on September 11, 2001. So I, you know, I woke up to like the news at the, a plane and hit the, basically like the floor below my office. And a lot of the people that I worked with, you know, didn't survive. And that was really, really horrific experience, you know, really alienating kind of experience. And so after that, you know, I, I think like a lot of people in the city then I really had to reorient myself in my life. And you know, I just decided not to do corporate jobs, you know, ever again. And you know, it's really broke for a while. I like, like the world's worst bike messenger for about eight months. And then I, I got a really good break. I like happened to meet a friend of a friend who played Blackjack professionally with a team and they recruited me and, you know, training in and I spent like the next four and a half years of my life playing a team advantage Blackjack out of Vegas mostly. Okay. Wow. So I knew there was more to this story than what I saw. So that's why I'm really glad we got said this is, this is, you know, now this is getting really interesting. Let's talk about the 9/11 piece a little bit. If you're okay with it. You know, one of the things you just said was you had to really reorient your life. And this question seems to come up over and over again lately. I don't know why, but you know, it's, it's the idea of a traumatic experience being the catalyst for massive change in your life. That seems to be an ongoing theme and I guess the question always becomes for me is, is okay, well, what if you don't have the traumatic experience? I mean, how do you do, how do you start to get your life reoriented without that? Is that even possible or do you think some kind of a downfall is, is necessary in order to really kind of see what's important? I think some kind of like, you know, emotional and intellectual disarray is probably necessary. I don't think that that needs to be caused by some like devastating or catastrophic event. I mean, I think, you know, if there is an event, then there's a, that there's something really like tangible to revisit in your mind and, you know, still have like a visceral sort of emotional response to later on after like the initial impetus is faded and, but, so I think for me, there, there was always this like imperative, you know, and in my case, I didn't really have a comfortable thing to fall back on, you know, I mean, I guess I could have gotten another translation job, but I just didn't, you know, I had to eat. So I had to move on pretty quickly, you know, but I think for anyone, I mean, if, if whatever you're stuck in is, is really not good for you, then you're going to have the same kind of experience and, you know, whether or not you like turn that into a catalyst to, to change yourself or something is, I think it's something that's up to the individual. Right. Yeah. Well, I think that, you know, it's interesting, you know, you brought up not having sort of a fallback plan, and I think that it's interesting that we, sometimes I think our fallback plan can often become our sort of handcuffs almost because, you know, I call it reaching a point of no return. I say, you know, you get to this point where you can't turn back anymore, you know, I reached that a few years ago when I realized I walked into a job interview and they more or less looked at everything that I had been working on and the very thing that had gotten me into the door, they said was the reason they wouldn't hire me, they said you're building all this stuff on the side, they said, you don't want a job, it's pretty clear. And we know you're going to quit when you don't need us anymore. And I had to come to terms with that. I had to look them in the eye and say, you know what, you're absolutely right. I won't be here a second longer than I have to be. And of course, I didn't get the offer, but it's, and that's kind of one of those interesting things where, you know, it's, it's sort of a balancing act between being audacious but also making sure you're set up to take care of yourself. You know, I want to ask you about the blackjack team, I actually didn't know that. That's such an interesting part of this. I mean, what's it like to spend four years playing on a team blackjack team? I mean, is it, is it the way it's portrayed in the movies where you're ending up in backgrounds of casinos, potentially getting beat up or putting on disguises and running from, you know, casino executives, you know, what's, what's that a whole experience like and, and, you know, how does that lead to, hey, you know what, I'm done with this and I'm going to go get a PhD in math. Um, well, let's see, like, yeah, I mean, in a way, it is like the, the crappy movie that you saw based on that crappy book that you might have read, but the guy doesn't like put on, um, huge, like diamond rings to like break your face and, uh, um, there was, uh, one landmark suit a couple years ago, a guy who got back roomed at the Imperial Palace, which a dingy little casino on the strip, uh, actually originally built by, um, neo-nazi, and if you happen to look at a Google satellite image of it, the buildings built out like a swastika, um, the back roomed a guy, um, roughed him up, not really, I, I mean, I think they cuffed his hands behind him and very tightly in a very uncomfortable way and, and had him shoved against a wall for 40 minutes or so successfully sued them for $400,000. Um, so huge landmark suit, uh, um, after that, uh, because, you know, at least in Vegas on the strip, I've been very wary of, um, anything coming close to that. Of course, I played most of my career before that, um, so I, I got back roomed a lot, uh, uh, but maybe I should take a step back, uh, yeah, so playing team blackjack, um, you know, it's, it was a lot of fun, um, for the first couple of years, you know, it's like a lot of interesting stories, a lot of like good people, um, you know, most of whom I, I still am friends with and occasionally play blackjack with, uh, you know, it was a great part-time job, uh, I, I played, you know, maybe, uh, three, five days a month, um, you know, was able to pay my bills easily that way, which left me a lot of time, you know, um, to do other things, uh, you know, uh, we owned a house in Los Angeles, um, you know, so I'd fly out there, um, to play, um, you know, oftentimes we'd play in other places in the country or, you know, uh, other countries, um, we had a pretty large team, uh, we played really aggressively, uh, which was great for a bottom line, but, um, often it went invariably really meant getting kicked out a lot, you know, so, uh, after three or four years of that, I'd, I'd been kicked out of every property on the strip in Vegas multiple times, um, you know, and, and the last, the last time I remember trying to go into the Blauvio to get down, I was like, there's a, during the Super Bowl, um, so the floor was just packed, you know, I, like, bought in at a quarter table, so like a $25 table, which is the lowest limit table to have, uh, you know, for like $200 I buy in, I'm like, barely able to get a spot, uh, and, you know, I'm playing $25 bets for about, like, five minutes, I'm just looking around at conditions, you know, not even there really to play, I'm just there to like see if one could play, um, and, uh, two suits come down and, uh, you know, tap me on the shoulder and they're like, hey, Chris, you know, how's school? You know, and, and for me, that was like, uh, that was, uh, a watershed moment. I was like, okay, like the Blauvio, they're classy, but clearly like, um, like, uh, you know, the facial recognition technology is like, uh, it's not like bullshit. It's like, um, and, uh, you know, it's probably time I, like, transition into, uh, other things full time because my, you know, money making opportunities, at least on the strip are, are, you know, evaporating. Sparks something uncommon this holiday with just the right gift from uncommon goods. The busy holiday season is here and uncommon goods makes it less stressful with incredible hand-picked gifts for everyone on your list on one spot, gifts that spark joy, wonder delight and that it's exactly what I wanted feeling. They scoured the globe for original, handmade, absolutely remarkable things. Last year, I found the perfect gift for my nephew, periodic table building blocks. 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Visit colorado.chephron.com Let me ask you this, is there a thrill to it that you miss or is there an adrenaline to it? It sounds like there would be. Yeah, there's a rush. Anytime that you're in a situation, there's a lot of money going on squares and you have to do some computations involving how much money gets done and what decisions get made. Also there's a strong element of the feeder to it. One big mistake that the MIT team made and a reason they never made a ton of money was they aired on the side of technical ability. People who are doing the math for them had to be able to estimate the number of cards that have been played to within 13 cards, which maybe gets you a marginal amount, more expected value than being able to estimate within 26 cards. They ended up training people who just stared at discard trays, didn't look like gamblers at all. We're not really able to interact with other players, dealers, pit bosses very well at all. So never got down, so to speak, never really convinced anyone that they belonged in the casino because they didn't look like anyone else in the casino. So a big part of walking out of a casino with money is being able to convince the casino to let you play for a long enough period of time that your edge manifests in a positive result, and a big part of that is feeder. And so that whole package can be a lot of fun, but ultimately it's like you roll into town, you have a crazy 96 hours or however many hours it is, not sleeping much, playing a lot, and then you come out of town with some result, usually positive. But it got kind of hollow for me because it's not like I made anything other than money. I didn't change anyone's life, I didn't affect anyone in any meaningful way. So I kind of had this bad taste in my mouth after a couple of years of that and really wanted to move on and do something meaningful. So I think that makes a perfect set up to bringing us to sort of the UCLA years and how I discovered you. I love that you brought up the story of the relationship that caused you to move into your cubicle in the lab. It's funny because I think I read something yesterday that some of our greatest work comes from times of torture or times of people who are in their down times. It's this book called The Untethered Soul and you often look at great art, it often comes from some of the most traumatic periods of our life. And I mean, I would argue that what you've done is really an art form. It's not just math, but I think you've created art with what you've done with O.K. Cupid. I'm curious, there's probably an in-between phase in which you find out that you get an email about a relationship ending and then you bury yourself in your work, but there's sort of an in-between phase between those two things and I'm wondering how you navigated that in-between phase without letting it sort of destroy you, because clearly it led to a very positive place after that. Yeah, I let it destroy me, for temporarily. Yeah, I mean, it was pretty, I was pretty bummed out and it was a, yeah, it was a real low point and my way of like jiggering myself out of it was to make myself uncomfortable. So, I just started removing sources of comfort and the first thing to go was my living situation. And it was a conscious decision, it wasn't like I needed to save money or anything. I did it so that I would finish or perish and I told myself I wasn't moving out of my cubicle until I graduated and that ended up taking a little over 12 months, but I did it and I had to use a supercomputer in Colorado for most of my work, so I had to be online when no one else was online in the country who might be using it, so that usually meant Pacific Coast time, you know, between like midnight and 4 a.m. or something. So I, you know, I was up late a lot by myself and it was pretty lonely and boring a lot of the time and I was, like I said before, really looking for something else that to hold my interest, you know, at some period where my research was a little bit stuck and, you know, eventually I hit on okay, Cupid, does that make sense? Yeah, that makes a completely sense. So I think that one of the things that's really interesting is you said removing sources of comfort and man, I mean, that's talk about ways to grow really fast. I mean, every time you, I always say all growth occurs outside your comfort zone and the thing is I think that can, I mean, it doesn't have to be in such drastic ways as the way you've done yours, but I mean, I think that that's such a huge thing and we're so sort of averse to that. It's, I see that over and over, but the people I see who have made just drastic changes in their life somehow every time they remove a source of comfort, it leads them to a much, much better place down the road. I mean, in the short run, it sucks. It's pretty awful. So let me ask you this, you know, one of the things you said earlier is through sort of the math work that you were doing, somehow you saw this connection between that and okay, Cupid. And, you know, we deal with a lot of creative people here at our show and a lot of people here do creative work. And one of the things that I have found as a common thread throughout creative work is is seeing patterns and connections. I mean, what probably led me to you is seeing patterns and connections of, okay, well, there's a story here, we could learn something about creativity from a guy who may not be classified traditionally as an artist or a creative, but he's done something incredibly creative. So you know, I'm curious kind of, is there, has all, have all the influences of your life connected in a way to lead to this and, and if so, I mean, how do we look at our own lives and bring in, you know, how do we find connectedness between all the things that we're working on? Like, is there something about the way you view the world that allows you to see patterns and things like that? Um, yeah, I mean, you know, to some extent, a product of my experiences. So like I mentioned, I played a lot of Blackjack, you know, I had like a number of mentors during that time who were, you know, physicists or mathematicians or, you know, just really smart, like poker players with high school degrees, you know, who would just like look at some game and, you know, be able to like take it apart and see how, you know, you could beat it and then go home and write some code and do some like Monte Carlo simulations and like come up with a strategy and then like have the, you know, where with all the like back that financially and like come back and bet the strategy, you know, and like if they lose catastrophic amounts of money, like have the further aware with all to like, you know, look at the model and if it's right, like, you know, continue to bet money, you know, and, you know, usually get through the period of what was just bad luck, you know, and end up making it, you know, a fair amount of money for themselves and just take that and repeat it, you know, and so I think I inherited a little bit of like, you know, I can reverse engineer things like there's nothing like, there's no God given status to OK Cupid because it's like a freaking website that people use, you know, you know, and I think that's like a myth about that we have about technology in general, right? It's like technology is going to improve our lives and it's going to do it in this sort of like, whoa, you know, mono from heaven kind of way where you can just like sit back and relax and like, you know, you're going to have the perfect date because like you're just going to swipe right and like there she's going to be, you know, and like, or, you know, you're going to like watch the perfect episode of your favorite show because there it is, you know, you don't have to engage with it. You don't have to like come to terms with technology, you know, for yourself. And there's a big fallacy hidden in there somewhere, you know, and I think it has to do with this, like, like, OK Cupid despite being a cool company and an interesting website does not have your best interests at heart, you know, they're a free website. Their bottom line is keeping people coming back to the site so they can serve them ads because that's how they, you know, it's in there incentive to make sure that you actually don't meet the love of your life. To some extent, yeah. Like you meeting the love of your life efficiently and getting offline forever is bad business for them. You know, it's not adding to their bottom line. And certainly you doing that in a way where you're not on their website, clicking through questions a lot is very bad for their bottom line, you know. So in that sense, you know, the multiple choice questions on OK Cupid function, they're clickbait, you know, when you answer one, not pups another one with, you know, another ad. And so they strive to keep those questions really interesting. They're all submitted by, they're all crowdsourced, you know, submitted by users. So they update. They're usually really funny. Like you're oftentimes answering them because you want to see how this person who you found their profile answered them. You know, so there's this like, show me yours and I'll show you mine kind of thing, which like, I think keeps people answering questions and you end up answering, you know, hundreds of questions, not because you're being highly accurate about the way that the answers affect your, you know, superposition and orientation in a high dimensional question space. But because like you just wanted to like you weren't really thinking about it, you know. And that doesn't actually generate a great result, you know, for at least for like straighter bisexual male. Right. So you know, on that note, let me let me ask you this was actually a question that I did think about ahead of time that I wanted to ask you. I mean, you've taken a very, very sort of quantitative approach, but you know, what you're talking to be about also has a qualitative aspect to it, because we're talking about human beings here, right? We're talking about real emotions, real feelings. And I'm curious, if through this process, how you balance those two things, I mean, given that, you know, your background is as a math PhD, yeah, so I don't really, I didn't really balance them at first. You know, it started off as just a pure kind of intellectual exercise. Like, I thought I could game the system. I had like the time on my hands and the tools at hand that I needed to do it. And so I, you know, spent about four weeks, you know, voting and like testing and making sure, you know, I wasn't getting detected and eventually curated a set of questions and answers, you know, and weights that, you know, took me from being a over 90% match with maybe a couple hundred women in LA to being a 90% or greater match with, you know, about 30,000 women in LA, which is, you know, it's a pretty large number, but that just put me at the top of everyone's search, essentially, you know. So a woman would go online, you know, search for something and there I'd be, you know, at the top or near the top. But I was still living, you know, in my cubicle. So, you know, that sort of just for me, where the whole social part of the journey really began, I would say. So, you know, obviously there's got to be some funny stories that have come from that. I mean, I can't imagine, you know, you're living in a cubicle and now you've got you're suddenly on the radar of 30,000 women in LA. Talk to me about sort of, I mean, I read some of the stuff in the article on Wired, which, you know, for those of you guys listening will link that. But I mean, I wanted to talk to you because I figured, I'm like, wow, what a crazy story. I mean, I can only imagine, you eventually did meet a woman that you're engaged to, if I remember correctly. Yeah, that's right. So talk to me about sort of the humorous and sort of unexpected twists and turns that came through this. I mean, obviously it's like, hey, in my mind, I think I'm like, so how did you get laid then, if you ever did during this process, like back at your cubicle in your lab? No, I mean, yeah, I usually went to her house. You know, I, well, first of all, I like, I had to make a profile that was going to convert all those like views into messages. And so, you know, I mined a whole bunch of photographs on the website, mined a whole bunch of text on the website, you know, found out quantitatively what goes into, you know, a really effective profile and like constructed, you know, sort of in the optimal collection of images and words to convert page views into messages. And then, and then after that, I just, I actually didn't really log in the site much at all. I, you know, I got about 10 unsolicited messages a day. Wow. You know, I read them, you know, I had a script that just imported them into my Gmail inbox. So I just read them like I read other email. And, you know, if I found one that, that was interesting, I might look at her profile and just shoot her back a really simple message. Like, you know, hey, you seem interesting. Do you want to have a cup of coffee? You know, and at first it was, hey, you seem interesting. You want to, like, insert, like, really creative, awesome sounding first romantic date idea. You know, and so there'd be like hikes, you know, shows, like concerts, dinner. But that that's not sustainable, you know, when you're doing on average, you know, seven, eight dates a week. You know, so that was, that was probably the first mistake I made. And then there are a lot of other funny mistakes, you know, like don't, I wouldn't ever recommend getting picked up by someone in a car that's not your own to go someplace far away, which is, you know, the default in Los Angeles, right, you know, without any recourse. Don't do that. You know, you'll be, like, taken to a very expensive sushi restaurant for, like, a seven course omakase dinner with, like, you know, very embittered, like, like, crazy woman who will hold you hostage. You know, for me, I wouldn't recommend drinking, which I know it's probably not something that worked for a lot of people. But I realized I just could not drink on these dates. It was a, it was just a horrible idea. You know, it clouded my judgment. It usually led to more drinks. It was expensive. It was also, you know, unsustainable for the number of dates I was going on. It, you know, definitely resulted in some fun nights, but also some, you know, waking up on, like, some girl's kitchen floor, like five in the morning to, like, you know, the smell of, like, someone cooking meth on a stove for breakfast. Wow. Yeah, I mean, you can really dive deep in Los Angeles, you know, on sites like O. K. Cupid and get real. But if, if what you really want is to meet someone, that, you know, you feel like you have a lot, like, that you really click with, I guess, then, then really these, these dates shouldn't be dates. They should just be, like, little pre-date, almost interviews. You know, it's, it's just, like, I needed, I realized I needed to be in the same physical spaces as, as the person for about five minutes. That's all I needed. And it was really part of the filtering experience, you know, and so I just tried to think of the smallest, you know, kind of atomic, like, socially acceptable interaction I could build around that, you know, and that turned out to be coffee. And if it could have been a five-minute cup of coffee, I would have done that, you know, but like, that, you know, it, that, that didn't, that doesn't work for many people. So it ended up being, you know, about half hour, 20-minute cup of coffee. Wow. And, you know, that itself got pretty trippy because, you know, the way I had to, the way I hacked the site, I had to cluster, like, all of these women into groups that had answered questions in a highly statistically significantly similar fashion. And so that, that manifested in continuously, like, odd ways when I would meet them in person. You know, people would order the same coffee drinks, you know, women would, yeah, like, you could predict their behavior before it happened. Yeah, I mean, people aren't their profiles, you know, so there are always little surprises in there, but like, yeah, the, like, unintended similarities were often really creepy. That is really funny. You know, one other question on this, I mean, you know, it seems like you go from, like, you know, troubled relationship to this overnight. One of the things we never talked about was sort of your earlier history with women. I mean, did you date a lot when you were younger or this was this like a sudden influx of, you know, a female company into your life? No, I mean, I dated a fair amount when I was younger. I think, uh, being in grad school, I like hadn't been dating as much for the last couple of years. So I mean, it was like zero to like 120. Right. But you know, I've been in like maybe five or something semi-serious, you know, whatever, like 12 month, eight month relationships before that. Pretty average, I think for, you know, someone in the US and they're like late 20s. So you know, obviously, you know, this finally did lead to you meeting a woman and, you know, you're engaged to it. So a couple of things come from that. I mean, I think the Wired article must have really sort of gone nuts. I mean, what have been the byproducts of this and have you been, have you been found out by any of the women that were part of your entire plan? Oh, yeah, I've been in touch with a couple of them. I mean, I, I've kept in touch with some of them just through okay, Cupid and, you know, I reached out to a few of them before the article. Yeah. But most of them, you know, the turnover on that site is quite high, you know, so most of them are, their profiles have been deactivated long, long ago. And I don't know what's become of them. I mean, I have, I have, I kept very detailed notes on all of my dates. So, you know, I often have their contact numbers and stuff. But, you know, I haven't felt the need to cold call them. So what, what's been the aftermath of the Wired article? I mean, obviously it landed you here at the Unmistakable Creative. I'm very curious kind of what else has come about because of this. I mean, have guys contacted you asking for help? Oh, yeah, I can only imagine. Yeah. So what's it now? It's like April. Yeah. So we're about three months out, I guess, from the publication date for the first. Decisions, decisions. Wait a minute. Are you still looking for cars on Carvana? Yeah. Decisions, decisions. When I use Carvana, I found the exact car I was looking for in minutes. Bought it on the spot. Electric or full diesel. Decision. Come on. You've been at it for weeks. Just buy it already. You're right. Cross over it is. Decisions decided. Whether you know exactly what you want or like to take your time, buy your car the convenient way with Carvana. This Halloween, ghoul all out with Instacart. 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Hydro is the state-of-the-art at-home rower that engages 86% of your muscles, delivering the ultimate full-body workout in just 20 minutes. From advanced to beginner, Hydro has over 500 classes, shot worldwide and taught by Olympians and world-class athletes. For a 30-day risk-free trial, go to hydro.com and use code ROW450 to save $450 on a Hydro Pro Rower. That's H-Y-D-R-O-W.com code ROW450. Forging ahead together drives Colorado's pioneering spirit. At Chevron, we donate funding and volunteer thousands of hours in support of the community's We Call Home. We also employ our neighbors to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer. All to help improve lives in our shared backyard. That's Energy in Progress. Visit Colorado.chefron.com. Two months, I was getting over 100 emails a day. It was really insane. And a sizable chunk of those were, "Hey, dude, can I like use your codes?" Or like, "Hello, Christopher. I am a researcher at Oxford University studying behavioral economics and I would really very much like to make use of your code that you wrote. I would wonder if you'd be willing to open source it or just send me a copy from my own personal news. I promise not to disseminate your code." Just lots of guys begging in various ways for tools. Lots of venture capitalists doing the same thing on a different level. Lots of media outlets, especially in the first couple of weeks. A couple really cool non-standard sort of media channels like you guys or NPR like science shows from Canada, New Zealand, Poland, France. A couple documentary filmmakers. Numerous Hollywood producers, book agents, I don't know, really runs the gamut. Has it changed your career trajectory at all? Now you're teaching at Northridge. That's how I got in contact with you and I googled you. But I'm curious. Has it altered what you're going to do with your life and the math career? Definitely, fundamentally. Very big change. I can't go into specifics so much. I've been incredibly fortunate. The article had over 50,000 likes on Facebook. It was a really huge article for Wired. Definitely life-changing. That exposure was able to put me in front of enough like-minded people that I was able to connect with some of them and really affect a lot of change personally and professionally. Well, Chris, we're close to about an hour here and this has been a really entertaining chat. I really appreciate you coming and taking the time to join us and share some of your insights with us. I've been asking you one final question. Our show is called the Unmistakable Creative. I'd imagine as a byproduct of this, you've probably seen your fair share of things on the web. I'm very curious what you think it is that makes somebody or something on the Internet or in the world today unmistakable? That's a good question. I think that there's a lot of "viral" content on the Internet these days and a lot of news is sort of curated performance art, whether it is actually a fake Twitter conversation on a plane on Thanksgiving that's promoted as real news or it's like real news that's been blown so far out of its original context that it might as well be the theater. I think that actual stories from real people doing interesting things tend to stand out from the massive load of bullshit that normally rolls through your Facebook news feed or whatever. In my case, what I did hit a nerve with a lot of people, I think on a couple of levels, there were people who were very uncomfortable with it and called it manipulative or misogynist. I think that at a time when we know that the NSA is scraping our metadata, we know that companies have to do it for the NSA and they also do it for their own profit, like Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, whatever, but maybe it's a little less comfy when an individual does it, especially when you can put a face on that person or that person's like a Caucasian male, putative mathematician, probably reclusive, probably socially, not normalized, probably weird. It's pretty easy to put me in a little box and call me, throw some label on it. The story caused a fair amount of controversy just on those grounds. I think that is maybe part of its interest for some people and for other people, the idea that you can do something with data and have a real effect on your personal life is a really interesting idea as a conceit to meditate on. I think that that's what held interest for probably most of the people I've talked to. Wow. Really, really cool. It's funny. I had a guy here who was talking to me about relationships as an engine for personal growth. When I asked him that exact question, he said depth. I love that you brought up the amount of crap that comes across your Facebook newsfeed. People say BuzzFeed is the lowest common denominator on the Internet. It's where you go when you run out of looking at when your attention span has gone to the point where you need to look at something that has no depth. I really appreciate you coming and taking the time to join us and ensure some of your insights with our listeners here at The Unmistakable Creative. It's been a very different kind of conversation, but that's why I wanted to have it because I knew it would be something unusual and something that we'd probably not hear on many other podcasts. Yeah, it was my pleasure. It was great talking to you. Likewise, and for those of you guys listening, we'll wrap the show with that. You've been listening to The Unmistakable Creative Podcast. 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A look at an unconventional college experience in China
Why intentional discomfort is instrumental to growth
How to deal with the feeling that you don’t fit in
The realities of survival in other parts of the world
Learning to reorient your life in order to find meaning
Life as a professional blackjack player
Using a painful experience as a powerful opportunity for growth
Learning to see connections and patterns in your work
The myths that technology will drastically improve your life
Balancing the qualitative and quantitative elements of dating
Hilarious online dating anecdotes and things to avoid
How Chris’ appearance on Wired led to other opportunities

Resources Mentioned

How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find Love

Chris Mcinklay has a PhD in Mathematics from UCLA.

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