Mora Erin Smeely: We are living in a golden age of data. Data scientist Seth Stevens-Davidowitz looked at just that information from dating sites and then he compared it with studies of long-term compatibility in couples. He found most variables had little to no predictive power. So how is you date based on data? Pay less attention to the traits that are highly computed over in the dating market. Better yet, focus more of your attention on people who are lacking these highly computed over traits that don't turn out to be happy.
Big data. Baseball managers use it to win pennants. Stockbrokers use it to beat the market. And now you can use it to get what you really want in life. That's according to a new book by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz called Don't Trust Your Gut.
When faced with difficult life decisions-like "Who should I marry?" and "How can I avoid screwing up my kids?"-we typically follow our intuition. The problem is that our intuition is often wrong. The smarter move, Seth says, is to comb through millions of data points to find statistically significant answers. But who has time for that, not to mention the technical know-how? Well, Seth does. And this week on the show, he'll share the answers he found, starting with the surprising traits you should look for when searching for your soulmate.