Vaclav Petricek

Chief Data Scientist, eHarmony Course/eHarmony · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

12statements → 7claims → 3claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 4.25/5average certainty → 1.5/5average debate potential →

2 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 4 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

7 assertions · 5 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 4 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Vaclav argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
eHarmony accounted for a quarter of online dating marriages from 2005-2012
“So about a quarter of all the marriages from online dating had met on eHarmony.”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 17:00 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
eHarmony couples had nearly half the divorce rate of offline couples
“The couples that met on eHarmony also had a low divorce rate, so nearly half of what the marriages that met actually offline.”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 17:59 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013

How they sound: speaking style how? →

246 words/min while actually speaking · 39.9 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Vaclav Petricek: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,235 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Vaclav Petricek said on the MAD Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Contradicted
eHarmony couples had nearly half the divorce rate of offline couples
“The couples that met on eHarmony also had a low divorce rate, so nearly half of what the marriages that met actually offline.”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 17:59 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013
Assertion Supported
eHarmony accounted for a quarter of online dating marriages from 2005-2012
“So about a quarter of all the marriages from online dating had met on eHarmony.”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 17:00 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013
Assertion Supported
One in three U.S. marriages between 2005 and 2012 began online
“One in three marriages in this period, so that was from 2005 to 2012, met online.”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 17:05 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Petricek: Obstreperousness is predictive of long-term marital satisfaction
“One of these dimensions that's quite predictive is obstreperousness.”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 2:32 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013
Assertion Not checkable as stated
eHarmony data shows communication peaks when men are 4-8 inches taller
“The highest probability of communication between two people is when the height difference is between four to eight inches, when the male is four to eight inches taller.”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 6:39 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013
Disclosure
eHarmony only introduces couples predicted to be in upper quartile of satisfaction
“And we only introduce them if they fall into the upper quartile. If there is a very high probability that they will be in the upper quartile in terms of satisfaction.”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 4:02 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013
Assertion Not checkable as stated
eHarmony finds matching vegetarians yields the highest positive success lift
“For vegetarians, this is the biggest positive lift versus, like, a normal average match that we make.”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 7:38 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013
Assertion Not checkable as stated
eHarmony has data on about 40 million registered users
“We have this data on about forty million users who have registered on eHarmony you know, since the beginning, and we know all these attributes about them”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 10:17 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013
Disclosure
Petricek: eHarmony has fewer than 10 people on machine learning
“Ah, so eHarmony has about 200 people in Santa Monica. We have a few offices around the world, and in terms of technology, we have about 50% tech, but still, like, a lot of people are building the site, infrastructure, and so on, so matching is about twenty-ish…”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 20:03 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013
Disclosure
Petricek: eHarmony builds localized compatibility models for each country
“What we do is whenever we were rolling out in a new country, we first redo the compatibility model. So we take a new sample, a representative sample of marriages, and we have specific models for that locale in terms of compatibility. And then on the large-scal…”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 21:24 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013
Disclosure
Petricek: eHarmony asks users about 150 questions to model personality
“We ask actually about 150 questions these days, which give us a very good snapshot of the personalities of people.”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 2:12 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013
Disclosure
eHarmony relies on Vowpal Wabbit as its main machine learning tool
“Our workhorse is Wopal Wabbit, up there on the right, which came out of Yahoo Research.”
Vaclav Petricek Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 12:21 Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Vaclav Petricek, eHarmony // Data Driven NYC 19 // October 2013 Dec 5, 2013 20m
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