The Difference Between Offer And Provide

US Patent 6735568: Secrets For Successful Relationships

from the forget-chemistry dept

Thu, May 27th 2004 11:45pm — Michael Ho

There's no end to the number of patents granted just for the sake of having a patent -- because patents lend the mystique of legitimacy and can be used as marketing gimmicks. But the scientific study of relationships is a legitimate field, so it shouldn't be too surprising that EHarmony.com has received a patent on relationships, called a "method and system for identifying people who are likely to have a successful relationship." Their rival, Match.com, obviously doesn't want to capitulate and calls the claims "ridiculous at best." The more interesting tidbit is that 20% of the people answering eHarmony's questionaire are rejected outright as not the marrying type. Maybe they're on to something, but that statistic doesn't quite seem to fit with the 50% divorce rate in the US. However, if eHarmony rejects too many people, they might not be very profitable.

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7 Comments

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Mike (profile), 27 May 2004 @ 11:49pm

exclusivity...
However, if eHarmony rejects too many people, they might not be very profitable.

Ah, but you forget, the value of a club increases with its level of exclusivity...
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dorpus, 28 May 2004 @ 10:37am

Math is consistent
Most of the divorces in the US are done by a minority crowd of repeat-divorcers. Even if over 50% of all marriages end in divorce, over 50% of all people do have life-long marriages.
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Too many years from my statistics course, 1 Jun 2004 @ 2:53am

Marriage failures
So one in five is not of "marriage type" (rename them DIV). Which means that 80 % of people should be marriage types (rename this group MAR). And there are two people in marriage.

If we assume that only MAR-MAR marrgiage lasts and MAR-DIV, DIV-MAR, and DIV-DIV marriages end in divorces... and some make some other random marriage assumptions (being MAR or DIV type does not affect your decision to marry, or the selection of your spouse is not dependent of her/his/your type), doesn't this then mean that 64 % of the marriages last... statistically :-)

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Anonymous Coward, 8 Aug 2005 @ 6:49pm

Re: Marriage failures
Those sound like Hardy-Weinberg conditions. You could do it that way and get 64% too.
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Wizard Prang, 10 Feb 2006 @ 7:33am

Re: Marriage failures
Your statistic is skewed by the fact that those who divorce will often remarry... and re-divorce.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jul 2007 @ 3:14pm

the divorce rate is not directly related to eharmonys rejection rate.
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Anonymous Coward 2, 15 Jan 2008 @ 8:02pm

Just because 2 people are the marrying type doesn't mean that their relationship would last. I think I would be more likely to join eHarmony because they do reject people that aren't the "marrying type."
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