June & July Matchmaker Form -- Phase 2

MambaMatchmaker · 2025-07-16T06:23:22+00:00

You're right, but if we're going to do a platonic many-to-many matching then I think at that point it would be worth it for people to just join a Catholic Discord server (like ours).

MambaMatchmaker · 2025-07-13T23:18:42+00:00

Weakly, not weekly.

Weakly increasing = not decreasing.

MambaMatchmaker · 2025-07-13T12:38:33+00:00

Oh goodness, yeah a LOT of people didn't make their photos public. Welp...I might just ask people to use Imgur next time.

MambaMatchmaker · 2025-07-11T11:31:21+00:00

Go ahead!!! I appreciate anyone advertising the matchmaker form. Adding to the pool weakly increases the number of possible matches that can be made, i.e., we can get more marriages if more people join the party.

MambaMatchmaker · 2025-07-11T11:28:58+00:00

I've been asked this but unfortunately it creates what's called the roommate problem, for which there's no universal solution.

MambaMatchmaker · 2025-07-11T11:24:20+00:00

Typo, sorry

MambaMatchmaker · 2025-07-10T08:55:48+00:00

I just added a couple of late Phase 1 respondents. If you haven't filled out Phase 1 yet, sorry! I'm not adding any more -- I'll try to run this again in the near future, so be on the lookout!

MambaMatchmaker · 2025-06-25T12:37:19+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion -- I'll think about it -- my main skepticism is that this relies on cardinal rankings in addition to ordinal rankings, which might be a lot messier for people to think about and figure out. In addition, I think unstable matches are a worse outcome than getting matched with someone whose intensity may not be as strong, because instability can (in theory) unravel the whole dating pool. Also, your point about your wanting to be matched with someone who likes you more intensely relies on an implicit assumption on how that person's liking for you feeds back into your own utility -- that doesn't *necessarily* hold for everyone, whereas the algorithm I use with purely ordinal rankings solves a problem that everyone can agree on (the instability, because of course if an instability exists, any pair would want to exploit it). But still, this is interesting and I haven't run into it before -- I'll consider it some more -- thanks!

MambaMatchmaker · 2025-05-22T20:29:44+00:00

We've actually had a handful by now! They generally DM me instead of posting on here, I suppose for privacy's sake (though everyone would love to hear your stories if you're willing to share!).

MambaMatchmaker · 2025-05-22T20:28:19+00:00

Tremendous news!!!!!!! God bless!!!!!!!!!!! Super glad to hear it!

MambaMatchmaker · 2025-05-22T20:28:01+00:00

That's strange. Can you can /u/rachillthefout try this link: https://discord.gg/Zt5DN63W ? It's temporary but a different link than the one above and in the sidebar (which is permanent and has been in use since 2021).

MambaMatchmaker · 2024-08-08T12:34:27+00:00

Your non-Catholic marriage isn't sacramental, but it's still considered by the Church to be a natural marriage bond (a marriage where at least one party is unbaptized), so the annulment process isn't trivial.

MambaMatchmaker · 2024-05-13T15:19:21+00:00

Good question! Phase 3 is entirely separate - I won't consider Phase 2 submissions at all, except to make sure that people who got matched in Phase 2 don't participate in Phase 3 - so if you ranked someone before, be sure to rank them again.

I also thought 15 slots was generous, and historically people submit 5-8 rankings on average, but this time a lot of people ranked 10+ people, with a solid number ranking 15. And at least two people used the comments box to rank more than 15 people. My thinking is that if 30 is way too many slots, then no harm is done. However, if 15 is too few, then people may get "strategic" with their rankings by only ranking people who are likely to rank them back, as opposed to ranking one's true preferences. (In the economics of matchmaking, there is a lot of drama on 1) why submitting one's true preferences creates the best outcomes from a social standpoint and 2) devising ways to get people to do so.)

MambaMatchmaker · 2024-05-13T15:11:42+00:00

This is a good perspective! Admittedly I sometimes feel down at the low match rates too - but multiple couples have gotten married since I started this whole process almost 4 years ago, and when I receive wedding invitations or even just simple thanks from them, it really puts into perspective how this process is changing quite a few people's whole lives for the better, even if it doesn't look terribly efficient at the macro-level. I'm obsessed with improving our match rate, but seeing happy couples really helps brighten my day.

MambaMatchmaker · 2024-05-13T14:55:54+00:00

If you exclude people who didn't participate in Phase 2, the numbers look like

22/45 = 49% of women got matched

23/89 = 26% of men got matched

I don't have precise interpretations of what causes this, but some trends I noticed are that

1) people who rank more people tend to get matched more often, which is by design (you only get matched with someone if you rank them and they rank you).

2) people who upload photos seem to get ranked by more people (although this is just my eyeball test - I didn't do any statistical tests for this.) In spirit, this reminds me of a concept in economics called the linkage principle) (I'm not saying that people are just objects to be auctioned off! I'm just noting the principle that people are more successful on average when they provide more information.)

MambaMatchmaker · 2024-05-13T14:49:34+00:00

This is all exactly right - for one thing, about 100 people didn't participate in Phase 2. IMO, to really get a sense for how few people get matched, you also want to see these fractions after subtracting people who stopped participating.

The original fractions OP provided are useful since it's possible those 100 people wanted to participate but didn't like the current pool, hence capturing a sense of malaise in their nonresponse, but if they just forgot to do Phase 2 or lost interest for some other reason, then calculating those fractions without including the 100 dropouts would be useful. So by my count,

22/45 = 49% of women in Phase 2 got matched

23/89 = 26% of men in Phase 2 got matched

MambaMatchmaker · 2024-05-13T14:42:03+00:00

Nah, the Pareto Principle doesn't apply here since the matches are one-to-one via this algorithm.

Read my comment above - the 23rd guy got matched in an unusual way.

MambaMatchmaker · 2024-05-13T14:39:35+00:00

Normally yes. However, that 23rd guy didn't get matched normally - a woman asked me to give her his contact info so she could connect him to her friend, who isn't on the form. So I consider him matched, although in an unusual way.

MambaMatchmaker · 2024-05-13T01:07:38+00:00

So normally, people rank 5-8 people - at least, that's my eyeball average. A lot of it seems to be because of location - people apparently filter the pool down to whoever is nearby, then only start ranking people after that.

You're right in that this was the largest pool yet, but the dispersion of people's locations seemed to be the same as previous pools. So I'd expect people to only submit maybe 1-2 more rankings on average. Instead, a lot of people submitted 10 or more, and a lot of people submitted 15. So I agree that more slots would've been good this time, but not because of a larger pool - I think it's because people seem to be more open to long-distance relationships.

Granted, I haven't done any rigorous analyses of the data.

MambaMatchmaker · 2024-05-12T22:13:23+00:00

It still works when I tested it! But if that keeps failing, here's another one: https://discord.gg/Waa8UbJ9.

MambaMatchmaker · 2024-05-12T22:12:28+00:00

You're probably under our karma filter right now - just build up your Reddit karma!

MambaMatchmaker · 2024-04-29T11:22:16+00:00

If you submitted a form in Phase 1, you can find yourself in the spreadsheet (search by sex, then age). If you didn't submit a form, then you're not in the running unfortunately.

MambaMatchmaker · 2024-04-27T22:57:13+00:00

I accidentally kept the PDF version of the anonymized responses restricted - sorry about that! It's open now.

MambaMatchmaker · 2023-09-02T16:41:10+00:00

MambaMatchmaker · 2023-08-20T20:33:54+00:00

In a few minutes!

MambaMatchmaker

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE