Math is Hard

Companies will often use statistics to pitch their products.  The idea is that statistics somehow give a legitimacy to a product.  Statistics lie, when they are manipulated, but sometimes companies will put out numbers that make no sense.

eHarmony is a dating site that measures over 40 different aspects of your personality to match your compatibility with that of your partner.  It's a scientific match.

Driving home from Chicago with my wife, I heard a radio commercial for eHarmony.  The founder of eHarmony says that on average, they receive marriage notices from 10 couples a day.  Good for them.  I'm glad it works for them.  Currently, 5,000,000 people are in the eHarmony database.

10 couples a day times two people times 365 days a year is 7300 people.  Out of 5MM, it's a 1.4% success rate.  1.46% is the exact same rate as that of the general population.

In 1997, the marriage rate per 1,000 was 7.2.  That's 14.4 people married for every thousand in the U.S.  That's 1.44%. 

It would seem that the success of Eharmony is roughly the same as the general population in marrying its members.  Now, numbers lie, so perhaps 1.44% versus 1.46% give the game slightly to eHarmony, but we don't know if the number of marriage notices is 9.5 or 10.4. 

So we can say from what we know, is eHarmony is roughly the same to the general population.  The problem is the population of Eharmony is not the general population, they represent the single population, which is 38% to 42% based on gender.  What does that mean?  It means the general population number is multiplied by 2.38 to 2.63 (dependent on gender).

From the results, it seems that the population of the eHarmony database actually has a lower marriage rate per person than that of the single population.

So, why do I bring this up?  It's not to bash eHamrony or the people who use eHarmony.  I wish them all the best.  It's the statistics that are pushed by the company to convince you eHarmony works.  I don't have the actual numbers, and comparing the eHarmony numbers to 1997 population obviously changes them , so my numbers aren't scientific.   They still show that eHarmony has a long way to go in pitching statistics to their audience.

Transparency is the point of blogging.  Maybe if we start pointing out the inadequacies of the companies who provides us services, they might bring us a better product.