6 ms·
okcupid is doing science. I wonder what academic will pick up this data and extract evolutionary biology conclusions from it.
by albertcardona 17y ago
okcupid is doing science. I wonder what academic will pick up this data and extract evolutionary biology conclusions from it.
- lionhearted 17y agoI don't know why you're being voted down - it seems to me like they are doing science, and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a reference to Okcupid in a university study or a pop science book.
- ovi256 17y agoIf they release their dataset, it'll spark a lot of research. Datamining researchers today use a lot of 'hot' datasets, from Netflix to ePinions, which are sometimes old, but they are available. In some research domains, it is not uncommon for data sets to have huge importance, including getting you tenure and being guaranteed resources to exploit the dataset you gathered.
- albertcardona 17y agoIn this sense I meant it: that they are collecting valuable data. That their own analysis is flawed by their own bias is evident to me, but does not diminish the value of their data.
- cynicalkane 17y agoThe idea of okcupid "doing science" reminds me of the quote from the video game Portal, which is appropriate, because both things involve the thought that something is "doing science" when it really isn't. Doing science, if we are to go by Feynman's exposition of it, involves more than just gathering data--it also means accounting for everything that can make your data wrong. OkCupid is just gathering data and presenting it. This is an important part of science, and it's interesting to read about, but it is not a sufficient condition for having done science.
- memetichazard 17y agookcupid is doing science in the same way that Mythbusters is doing science. Obligatory xkcd reference: http://xkcd.com/397/ http://xkcd.com/397/