Before watching

About this video

By Christian Rudder

Give a short summary of the video.

5 Discuss:

a) What kind of a person was most likely to develop an interest in video games in the 50s, 60s and 70s? Why?

b) It took a while for video games to catch on. What factors do you think contribute to whether or not a new technology catches on?

c) Arcade games became less popular by the late 80s but home gaming console sales continued to grow. Why do you think that might be?

INSIDE OK CUPID: THE MATH OF ONLINE DATING

When two people join a dating website, they are matched according to shared interests and how they answer a number of personal questions. But how do sites calculate the likelihood of a successful relationship? Christian Rudder, one of the founders of popular dating site OKCupid, details the algorithm behind 'hitting it off.'

Translate into Russian:

Approach, notice, significant, solve a problem, entire, excel, paperweight, pervasive, match, addition, multiplication, square roots, specify, dimension, reveal, make sense, weigh all things equally, range, irrelevant, mandatory, get along, crunch, set of common questions, compute a match, messy, neat, spotlight, assign numerical values, irrelevant, calculations, multiply, mutual, margin of error, outline.

Watch the video “Inside OKCupid: The math of online dating”

http://ed.ted.com/lessons/inside-okcupid-the-math-of-online-dating-christian-rudder

What is OKCupid?

OkCupid is a free friendship, dating, and social networking website that features member-created quizzes and multiple-choice questions. The site supports multiple modes of communication, including instant messages and emails. OkCupid was listed in Time magazine's 2007 Top 10 dating sites.

While watching:

Fill in the gaps:

a) And since computers are such a _____ part of everyday life, _____ are everywhere.

b) In fact, the earliest U.S. video game _____ on record was in 1948, and at the time it was ______ to as a cathode-ray tube _____ device.

c) The math behind OK Cupid's matching algorithm is surprisingly simple. It's just some _____, _____, a little bit of _____ _____.

d) Some questions tell you more about a person than others. For example, a question about _____, something like, "Which is worse: _____ burning or _____ burning?" might _____ more about someone than their _____ in movies.

e) OK Cupid can _____ out how well two people will get along. The algorithm _____ the numbers and gives us a _____.

f) The first question, let's say, is, "How messy are you?" and the answer possibilities are very _____, ______, and very _____.

g) The final step is to take these two match _____ and get one number for the both of you. To do this, the _____ multiplies your _____, then takes the nth root, where n is the _____ of questions.

After watching:

1 Match the words in A with the words in B:

2 Answer the questions:

a) What is OkCupid?

b) What is an algorithm?

c) What is a computer without an algorithm?

d) What was the first thing needed to match people up?

e) Which questions did the creators of OkCupid decide to ask users?

f) Why did the creators of OkCupid have to ask people to specify not only their own answer, but the answer they wanted from someone else?

g) What was the final data point in OkCupid?

h) What are the three things for OkCupid matching algorithm?

i) What can OK Cupid figure out?

j) Why does the algorithm multiply as opposed to average the two match scores together?

k) What does Christian Rudder say is the most important skill a person can have these days?

3 Decide if the statements are true or false:

a) Basically OK Cupid's matching algorithm helps us decide whether two people should get married.

b) An algorithm is just a systematic, step-by-step way to solve a problem.

c) The tricky part in designing OK Cupid's matching algorithm was figuring out how to take something mysterious, human attraction, and break it into components that a computer can work with.

d) The best way to get data quickly from people is to just ask for it.

e) If both people in a relationship are saying yes to the question "Do you like to be the center of attention?" then they are not going to have massive problems.

f) Any time OK Cupid matches two people, it goes through the steps we just outlined. First it collects data about your answers, then it compares your choices and preferences to other people in complicated, mathematical ways.

4)Начало формы

5)Конец формы