TED | 如何通过数据分析找到最佳伴侣（视频+中英对照翻译+音

2017-07-18 本文已影响303人 TED博物馆

How I hacked online dating

#插画：puuung

TED简介：2015 |艾米·韦伯 (Amy Webb)在婚恋网运气不佳——看上的人不回复，约她的人又谈不拢（还有更糟的）。所以，这位数据迷开始列表运算找幸福。来听听她如何玩转婚恋网，把烦人的遭遇化为改变命运的快乐机遇。

演讲者：Amy Webb艾米·韦伯

片长：17：27

视频+中英对照翻译+音频如何通过数据分析找到最佳伴侣

【TED心理】Amy Webb：玩转婚恋网_标清_腾讯视频

中英文对照翻译

So my name is Amy Webb, and a few years ago I found myself at the end of yet another fantastic relationship that came burning down in a spectacular fashion. And I thought, what's wrong with me? I don't understand why this keeps happening.

我的名字呢，叫艾米·韦伯。几年前我发现自己走到又一段美好恋情的尽头，一切绚丽消逝。你说我到底怎么了？真不懂为什么每次都这样。

So I asked everybody in my life what they thought. I turned to my grandmother, who always had plenty of advice, and she said, "Stop being so picky. You've got to date around. And most importantly, true love will find you when you least expect it."

我就去问身边的人看他们怎么想。我找到姥姥，她总有很多忠告。她说 “别太挑剔了" “你得多跟人谈谈" “还有，最重要的是，顺其自然缘分始终会来的“

Now as it turns out, I'm somebody who thinks a lot about data, as you'll soon find. I am constantly swimming in numbers, formulas and charts. I also have a very tight-knit family, and I'm very, very close with my sister,and as a result, I wanted to have the same type of family when I grew up.

而实际上我这个人总要找依据，这点相信你很会发现。我总是沉浸在数字当中，长期和公式、图表打交道。同时我的家庭非常和睦，我和姐姐关系特别好，所以从小我就想长大以后要有一个温暖的大家庭。

So I'm at the end of this bad breakup, I'm 30 years old, I figure I'm probably going to have to date somebody for about six months before I'm ready to get monogamous and before we can sort of cohabitate, and we have to do that for a while before we can get engaged. And if I want to start having children by the time I'm 35, that meant that I would have had to have been on my way to marriage five years ago. So that wasn't going to work.

所以这次分手，很伤心。我当时30岁，想着起码要和下一任交往6个月才能真正确定关系，然后再考虑搬一起住，之后再过段时间才考虑订婚。所以，如果想在35岁之前要孩子就意味着我必须提前5年为结婚做准备，很明显，那行不通。

If my strategy was to least-expect my way into true love, then the variable that I had to deal with was serendipity. In short, I was trying to figure out what's the probability of my finding Mr. Right? Well, at the time I was living in the city of Philadelphia, and it's a big city, and I figured, in this entire place, there are lots of possibilities. So again, I started doing some math. Population of Philadelphia: it has 1.5 million people. I figure about half of that are men, so that takes the number down to 750,000.

如果换个思路 “顺其自然”等缘分，那么我要面临的变数是运气。简单来说我想探个究竟看看随缘偶遇真命天子概率有多高。当时我呢住在费城，这是个大城市，所以我判断地方越大机会越大。接着我又开始算数了，费城人口总共150万，估计一半是男性，有效人数下降到75万。

I'm looking for a guy between the ages of 30 and 36, which was only four percent of the population, so now I'm dealing with the possibility of 30,000 men. I was looking for somebody who was Jewish, because I am and that was important to me.That's only 2.3 percent of the population.I figure I'm attracted to maybe one out of 10 of those men, and there was no way I was going to deal with somebody who was an avid golfer. So that basically meant there were 35 men for me that I could possibly date in the entire city of Philadelphia.

我的目标是30到36岁之间的男性，他们占这部分人口的4%，算起来可能剩下3万人。我要找犹太人因为我本身也是，这点很重要。他们只占这部分人口的2.3%，然后估计10个人当中有1个我喜欢，然后估计10个人当中有1个我喜欢，还有我和爱打高尔夫的完全合不来，也就是说对我而言，费城总共有35位男士适宜约会，在整个费城！

In the meantime, my very large Jewish family was already all married and well on their way to having lots and lots of children, and I felt like I was under tremendous peer pressure to get my life going already.

与此同时，我们犹太大家族其他成员全部都结了婚，而且还生了很多很多孩子，所以我总有巨大的压力和紧迫感要尽快解决人生大事。

So I have two possible strategies at this point I'm sort of figuring out. One, I can take my grandmother's advice and sort of least-expect my way into maybe bumping into the one out of 35 possible men in the entire 1.5-million-person city of Philadelphia, or I could try online dating.

这时候我有两个办法，我发现一是可以听姥姥的话，尝试“顺其自然” 碰上那一位在费城茫茫150万人海中偶遇那35位男士其中的一位。又或者我可以试试婚恋网。

Now, I like the idea of online dating, because it's predicated on an algorithm, and that's really just a simple way of saying I've got a problem, I'm going to use some data, run it through a system and get to a solution.So online dating is the second most popular way that people now meet each other, but as it turns out, algorithms have been around for thousands of years in almost every culture. In fact, in Judaism, there were matchmakers a long time ago, and though they didn't have an explicit algorithm per se, they definitely were running through formulas in their heads, like, is the girl going to like the boy?

其实我挺喜欢这个概念，因为我们可以用运算规则推算结果，所谓运算规则其实很简单，当我们遇到问题只要收集数据，放到系统里面就能找到解决办法。婚恋网，现在已经成为大家互相认识的第二大途径。不过网站的运算规则在几千年前就可以找到，例如犹太族从很早以前就有媒人，虽然他们没有列出公式但在脑子里一定琢磨过这些问题。比如女孩会喜欢男孩吗？

Are the families going to get along? What's the rabbi going to say? Are they going to start having children right away? The matchmaker would sort of think through all of this, put two people together, and that would be the end of it. So in my case, I thought, well, will data and an algorithm lead me to my Prince Charming? So I decided to sign on.

两家人能处得来吗？拉比(犹太教教师或法学导师)会怎么说？他们会不会马上生孩子？媒人们会先想好这些问题再把两个人凑到一起就完事了。而我呢？我想能不能通过数据和公式帮我找到白马王子？我决定注册。

Now, there was one small catch. As I'm signing on to the various dating websites, as it happens, I was really, really busy. But that actually wasn't the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that I hate filling out questionnaires of any kind, and I certainly don't like questionnaires that are like Cosmo quizzes. So I just copied and pasted from my résumé.

这里还有一个小插曲，我开设了几个婚恋网帐户。碰巧那段时间特别特别忙，不过那还不是最大的问题。最大的问题是我讨厌填问答表，尤其不喜欢时尚杂志小编爱问的题目尤，所以我直接把简历复制粘贴上去。

So in the descriptive part up top, I said that I was an award-winning journalist and a future thinker. When I was asked about fun activities and my ideal date, I said monetization and fluency in Japanese. I talked a lot about JavaScript.

上面描述部分我说我是获奖记者和未来思考者，让我描述兴趣爱好和理想人选，我填了赚钱和日语流利，还写了很多关于网页编码的内容。

So obviously this was not the best way to put my most sexy foot forward. But the real failure was that there were plenty of men for me to date. These algorithms had a sea full of men that wanted to take me out on lots of dates -- what turned out to be truly awful dates.

这一步走得确实不太优雅，最根本的问题是还是有很多男士和我约会。配对公式为我找到一大批男士他们不断约我——可结果却特别糟糕。

There was this guy Steve, the I.T. guy. The algorithm matched us up because we share a love of gadgets, we share a love of math and data and '80s music, and so I agreed to go out with him. So Steve the I.T. guy invited me out to one of Philadelphia's white-table-cloth, extremely expensive restaurants.

其中有一位叫史蒂夫的技术男，配对公式发现我们都对小玩意着迷，我们是数学迷、数据迷，还是80年代歌迷。我同意见他，然后这位技术男带我到费城一家特别高消费的西餐厅。

And we went in, and right off the bat, our conversation really wasn't taking flight, but he was ordering a lot of food. In fact, he didn't even bother looking at the menu. He was ordering multiple appetizers, multiple entrées, for me as well, and suddenly there are piles and piles of food on our table, also lots and lots of bottles of wine.

刚到我们就发现谈得不太有意思，但他点了很多吃的，他餐牌都不用看就点了几份开胃菜几份主食，还帮我点了；忽然间桌上堆满了大盘小盘吃的，还有很多很多瓶酒。

So we're nearing the end of our conversation and the end of dinner, and I've decided Steve the I.T. guy and I are really just not meant for each other, but we'll part ways as friends, when he gets up to go to the bathroom,and in the meantime, the bill comes to our table. And listen, I'm a modern woman. I am totally down with splitting the bill. But then Steve the I.T. guy didn't come back.

在我们谈得差不多晚餐也接近尾声的时候，我确信和技术男并非天生一对。但再见还可以是朋友。他去趟洗手间帐单也来了，看，我是现代女性平分帐单完全没问题。但技术男却没回来（倒吸气）

And that was my entire month's rent.(Audience gasps)So needless to say, I was not having a good night. So I run home, I call my mother, I call my sister, and as I do, at the end of each one of these terrible, terrible dates, I regale them with the details. And they say to me,"Stop complaining."

而那是我整整一个月的房租，不用说我那天晚上很不好受，跑回家之后我打电话找妈妈、找姐姐，每一次经历这些糟糕至极的约会之后，我都会打给她们，我披露每一个细节。

"You're just being too picky."

之后她们对我说 “别抱怨了” （笑声） “你就是太挑”

So I said, fine, from here on out I'm only going on dates where I know there's Wi-Fi, and I'm bringing my laptop. I'm going to shove it into my bag, I'm going to have this email template, and I'm going to fill it out and collect information on all these different data points during the date to prove to everybody that empirically,these dates really are terrible.

我说，好吧。那以后我只去有无线网络的地方约会，要带上手提电脑，把它塞到袋子里然后做一个邮件模版，把收集到的信息填进去，一边约会一边填。用客观事实向大家证实这些约会究竟有多糟糕。

So I started tracking things like really stupid, awkward, sexual remarks; bad vocabulary; the number of times a man forced me to high-five him.So I started to crunch some numbers, and that allowed me to make some correlations. So as it turns out, for some reason, men who drink Scotch reference kinky sex immediately.

我开始记录那些无聊又尴尬的性暗示语言、不适当的用词还有对方逼我与他击掌的次数。然后我开始统计这些数据，并且找到一些关联，我发现不知为什么喝苏格兰威士忌的男性立马联想到性怪癖。

Well, it turns out that these probably weren't bad guys. There were just bad for me. And as it happens, the algorithms that were setting us up, they weren't bad either. These algorithms were doing exactly what they were designed to do, which was to take our user-generated information, in my case, my résumé, and match it up with other people's information. See, the real problem here is that, while the algorithms work just fine,you and I don't, when confronted with blank windows where we're supposed to input our information online.Very few of us have the ability to be totally and brutally honest with ourselves.

当然不是说他们不好，只是不适合我。同样把我们凑到一起的配对公式也不差。它们按预先设计好的正常运行，用提取到的用户信息，比如我的简历，再和其他人的信息配对。可见真正的问题是虽然公式会按部就班，我们却没有。当我们面对空白栏填写个人信息的地方，没有多少人可以赤裸裸地描述完全真实的自己。

The other problem is that these websites are asking us questions like, are you a dog person or a cat person? Do you like horror films or romance films? I'm not looking for a pen pal. I'm looking for a husband. Right? So there's a certain amount of superficiality in that data.

另一个问题是网站总爱问你喜欢猫还是喜欢狗？爱看惊悚片还是爱情片？之类的问题，我又不是来找笔友，我在找丈夫对吧？而这些数据比较肤浅。

So I said fine, I've got a new plan. I'm going to keep using these online dating sites, but I'm going to treat them as databases, and rather than waiting for an algorithm to set me up, I think I'm going to try reverse-engineering this entire system. So knowing that there was superficial data that was being used to match me up with other people, I decided instead to ask my own questions. What was every single possible thing that I could think of that I was looking for in a mate?

所以我有个新计划继续上婚恋网，但只把它们当作资料库，而不是继续动地等公式配对。我要把整个系统反过来重新定义，既然公式配对用的是肤浅信息，我决定自己问问题我要找的另一半需要具备哪些条件呢？

So I started writing and writing and writing, and at the end, I had amassed 72 different data points. I wanted somebody was Jew-ish, so I was looking for somebody who had the same background and thoughts on our culture, but wasn't going to force me to go to shul every Friday and Saturday. I wanted somebody who worked hard, because work for me is extremely important, but not too hard.

我开始写，不停地写，到最后我积攒了72个数据点。我想找犹太人，找一个与我有共同文化背景和观点的人，但他又不会强迫我每周五六去犹太集会；我想找一个勤奋的人，因为我觉得工作特别重要，但不能工作狂。

For me, the hobbies that I haveare really just new work projects that I've launched. I also wanted somebody who not only wanted two children, but was going to have the same attitude toward parenting that I do, so somebody who was going to be totally okay with forcing our child to start taking piano lessons at age three, and also maybe computer science classes if we could wrangle it. So things like that, but I also wanted somebody who would go to far-flung, exotic places, like Petra, Jordan. I also wanted somebody who would weigh 20 pounds more than me at all times, regardless of what I weighed.

对我来说我的兴趣无非是我的一些新项目，我还想找一个打算生两个小孩而且在育儿方面和我观点一致的人。也就是说他完全不介意要孩子三岁学钢琴，可能还外加一些电脑课。如果条件允许的话，除此之外我还想找一个愿意远足异乡的人一起去约旦的彼得拉。还有我希望他比我重20磅，不论时间也不论我当时体重是多少。

So I now have these 72 different data points, which, to be fair, is a lot. So what I did was, I went through and I prioritized that list. I broke it into a top tier and a second tier of points, and I ranked everything starting at 100and going all the way down to 91, and listing things like I was looking for somebody who was really smart,who would challenge and stimulate me, and balancing that with a second tier and a second set of points.These things were also important to me but not necessarily deal-breakers.

有了这 72个数据点，说实话还真不少了，接下来我整理出优先次序，分两层排列这些数据点。然后从100 排到91？写的有我希望找一个很聪明的人、一个可以给我带来挑战和刺激的人，然后在第二层放上另外一组数据点这些对我同样重要，但不是必不可少。

So once I had all this done, I then built a scoring system, because what I wanted to do was to sort of mathematically calculate whether or not I thought the guy that I found online would be a match with me. I figured there would be a minimum of 700 points before I would agree to email somebody or respond to an email message. For 900 points, I'd agree to go out on a date, and I wouldn't even consider any kind of relationship before somebody had crossed the 1,500 point threshold.

列表完毕之后我开始建立计分系统，我想尝试借助数学计算出我和网站人选是否匹配我和网站人选是否匹配。我想对方至少要达到700分，才给他发电子邮件或者回信。达到900分才答应约会，我不会轻易投入感情，除非对方超过1500分才可以考虑。

Well, as it turns out, this worked pretty well. So I go back online now. I found Jewishdoc57 who's incredibly good-looking, incredibly well-spoken, he had hiked Mt. Fuji, he had walked along the Great Wall. He likes to travel as long as it doesn't involve a cruise ship. And I thought, I've done it! I've cracked the code. I have just found the Jewish Prince Charming of my family's dreams.

这个方法还挺有效的，我回到婚恋网发现了Jewishdoc57他出奇地帅，而且谈吐出众。曾经登上富士山、徒步长城而且他喜欢旅行，只要没有游船就好。我想我成功了！编码已被破解我终于发现了犹太白马王子，正如家人所愿。

There was only one problem: He didn't like me back. And I guess the one variable that I haven't consideredis the competition. Who are all of the other women on these dating sites? I found SmileyGirl1978. She said she was a "Fun girl who is Happy and Outgoing." She listed her job as "teacher." She said she is "silly, nice and friendly." She likes to make people laugh "alot."

问题只有一个，他并不喜欢我。看来有一个变数我还没考虑，那就是竞争对手。社交网站都有哪些其他的女性？我发现了SmileyGirl1978，她说她是 "快乐、活泼、有趣的女孩" 她填写的职业是教师，她说她 "很傻很友善“ “常常”爱逗大家笑。

At this moment I knew, clicking profile after profile that looked like this, that I needed to do some market research. So I created 10 fake male profiles. Now, before I lose all of you --understand that I did this strictly to gather data about everybody else in the system. I didn't carry on crazy Catfish-style relationships with anybody. I really was just scraping their data. But I didn't want everybody's data. I only wanted data on the women who were going to be attracted to the type of man that I really, really wanted to marry.

就在那一刻在点击完一个又一个类似的个人档案之后，我知道还需要市场调研。接着我建立了10个虚拟的男士档案，在人都走光之前——我想请大家谅解我的初衷，仅仅是收集数据去了解系统内的其他人，我并没有借此进行任何不道德的交流。确实只是收集数据，还不是所有人的数据，仅限女性，那些我的理想伴侣可能会喜欢的女性（笑声）

When I released these men into the wild, I did follow some rules. So I didn't reach out to any woman first. I just waited to see who these profiles were going to attract, and mainly what I was looking at was two different data sets. So I was looking at qualitative data, so what was the humor, the tone, the voice, the communication style that these women shared in common?

我把虚拟男士放出来之后还遵守了一些规矩。首先我没有主动联系女性，只等着看能吸引到谁。主要关注点有两方面，首先是定性数据比如幽默感、语调、声音、沟通方式，这些女性的共通点是什么？

And also quantitative data, so what was the average length of their profile, how much time was spent between messages? What I was trying to get at here was that I figured, in person, I would be just as competitive as a SmileyGirl1978. I wanted to figure out how to maximize my own profile online.

还有定量数据比如个人档案的平均长度、两次通信之间隔多久。我想证明的是如果有机会面对面交流我的竞争力不比SmileyGirl1978差。所以我想知道怎么调整网上档案才能最好地呈现自己。

Well, one month later, I had a lot of data, and I was able to do another analysis. And as it turns out, content matters a lot. So smart people tend to write a lot -- 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 words about themselves, which may all be very, very interesting. The challenge here, though, is that the popular men and women are sticking to 97 words on average that are written very, very well, even though it may not seem like it all the time.

一个月之后我收集了大量数据，足够再分析一回。结果发现内容很重要。聪明的人往往写很多 ——3、4千甚至5千字自我介绍。也许真的非常非常有意思，但很难匹敌/最受欢迎男女精选的97个字，虽然我们不一定感觉得到高手们的另外一个杀手锏是不特定语言。

The other hallmark of the people who do this well is that they're using non-specific language. So in my case,"The English Patient" is my most favorite movie ever, but it doesn't work to use that in a profile, because that's a superficial data point, and somebody may disagree and decide they don't want to go out because they didn't like sitting through the three-hour movie.

以我为例你看 "英国病人" 是我最喜欢的电影，但它不适合放在个人档案里面，因为这是一个肤浅的数据点，有人可能会有不同意见并且决定不和我约会仅仅因为他们不愿意花三个小时看一场电影。

Also, optimistic language matters a lot. So this is a word cloud highlighting the most popular words that were used by the most popular women, words like "fun" and "girl" and "love." And what I realized was not that I had to dumb down my own profile. Remember, I'm somebody who said that I speak fluent Japanese and I know JavaScript and I was okay with that. The difference is that it's about being more approachable and helping people understand the best way to reach out to you.

还有积极正面的语言很重要。看这些关键词里面是最常用的词语，最受欢迎女性都在用，比如 "有趣" “女孩” 还有 “爱” 。后来，我意识到没必要写一个低智商简介。还记得吗？我说我能讲流利的日语并且熟悉网页编码，这些都没问题，重点是怎么写让自己显得更亲切，让别人知道怎么采取主动。

And as it turns out, timing is also really, really important. Just because you have access to somebody's mobile phone number or their instant message account and it's 2 o'clock in the morning and you happen to be awake, doesn't mean that that's a good time to communicate with those people. The popular women on these online sites spend an average of 23 hours in between each communication. And that's what we would normally do in the usual process of courtship.

除此之外，时机也非常重要。当我们拿到别人的手机号码或者聊天帐号，碰巧凌晨2点还没睡，也许不是联系他们的好时机。最受欢迎的女性一般会等 23小时再进行下一次沟通，这也是我们约会时的常规。

And finally -- there were the photos. All of the women who were popular showed some skin. They all looked really great, which turned out to be in sharp contrast to what I had uploaded.

最后轮到照片了所有受欢迎女性都会露一些她们看起来很棒形成鲜明对比的是我当时上传的照片。

Once I had all of this information, I was able to create a super profile, so it was still me, but it was me optimized now for this ecosystem. And as it turns out, I did a really good job. I was the most popular person online.

掌握了这些信息之后，我建立了一个超级档案。我，还是我，只是在这个生态系统当中更优化的我。事实证明，我做得很不错成了婚恋网最受欢迎的人。

And as it turns out, lots and lots of men wanted to date me. So I call my mom, I call my sister, I call my grandmother. I'm telling them about this fabulous news, and they say, "This is wonderful! How soon are you going out?" I said, "Actually, I'm not going to go out with anybody." Because remember, in my scoring system, they have to reach a minimum threshold of 700 points, and none of them have done that. They said, "What? You're still being too damn picky."

后来特别特别多男人想和我约会。我又打电话给妈妈、姐姐和姥姥。告诉她们这个好消息，她们说 "真棒！“ “什么时候开始约会呀？" 然后我说 "嗯，我不会跟任何一个约会的" 因为记得吧，要在计分系统至少达到700分才行，这些男士们都还不够，她们就说 "什么？你还是太挑剔了"

Well, not too long after that, I found this guy, Thevenin, and he said that he was culturally Jewish, he said that his job was an arctic baby seal hunter, which I thought was very clever. He talked in detail about travel.He made a lot of really interesting cultural references. He looked and talked exactly like what I wanted, and immediately, he scored 850 points. It was enough for a date.

然后没过多久，我发现这个人戴文宁（Thevenin）他说他接受犹太风俗，还说他的工作是猎捕北极小海豹。我觉得这个说法很有意思，他详谈了很多关于旅行的事，引用了各种有趣的文化。他外表和谈吐都是我想要的，当场就拿下850分，够约会了。

Three weeks later, we met up in person for what turned out to be a 14-hour-long conversation that went from coffee shop to restaurant to another coffee shop to another restaurant, and when he dropped me back off at my house that night I re-scored him --[1,050 points!]

三个星期之后我们见面，谈了足足14小时。从咖啡店到餐厅到另一家咖啡厅，再到下一家餐厅。那天晚上他送我回家之后我重新评估 [1,050分!]

Thought, you know what, this entire time, I haven't been picky enough. Well, a year and a half after that, we were non-cruise ship traveling through Petra, Jordan, when he got down on his knee and proposed. A year after that, we were married, and about a year and a half after that, our daughter, Petra, was born.

看来，我一直还不够挑剔。一年半之后我们去旅游，当然没有坐游船。在约旦的佩特拉，他单膝下跪，求婚。一年之后我们结婚，又过了一年半我们的女儿佩特拉出生了。

Audience: Oh![What it means...]Obviously, I'm having a fabulous life, so --The question is, what does all of this mean for you?

可以看到我很享受这段精彩人生，不过（笑声）——问题是这一切对你有什么意义？

Well, as it turns out, there is an algorithm for love. It's just not the ones that we're being presented with online. In fact, it's something that you write yourself. So whether you're looking for a husband or a wife or you're trying to find your passion or you're trying to start a business, all you have to really do is figure out your own framework and play by your own rules, and feel free to be as picky as you want.

事实可以证明爱有计算规则，但不是我们在网上看到的那些，而是你自己写出来的。所以无论你要寻觅另一半还是找回激情或者要创业，只需要真真切切地找出自己的框架，按自己的规则进行发挥，爱多挑剔就多挑剔。

Well, on my wedding day, I had a conversation again with my grandmother, and she said, "All right, maybe I was wrong. It looks like you did come up with a really, really great system. Now, your matzah balls ... They should be fluffy, not hard."

最后，在我的婚礼上我和姥姥又谈了一回，她说 "好吧，也许是我错了“ “看来，你确实做了” “一个，很棒很厉害的系统“ “可是你的玛索球” “该松软些不能太硬了”

And I'll take her advice on that.

这个意见，我赞成。（掌声）

网友热评