How many dates should I expect?

One common worry that people have when they sign onto eHarmony is whether the service will provide them with enough matches.

In some cases, that fear is justified. If you're trying to find a bride who shares your Hindi beliefs, you live in a small town in Wyoming, and you can't travel further than 10 miles away... it's unlikely that eHarmony is going to find matches for you.

So, what can you expect from eHarmony if you're not in such a ridiculous situation?

That's hard to say. Because eHarmony keeps it's demographics secret.

Recently, eHarmony Blog attempted to answer this question, by calculating the number of members (or new members per day) that are likely to be in your area.

It seemed like a good start. But, unfortunately, not all of those members are matchable to you. Some are not going to be of the opposite sex. And, if you're like me, you're only interested in certain subsets of the population.

So, how can you figure out how many dates you're likely to get if you subscribe to eHarmony?

I've developed a worksheet to help guide your thought process. You can download the worksheet here.

It's still not going to provide accurate numbers - the model that we've used here is very crude, and is likely to be based on some inaccurate data. In my hands, it overestimated the number of Jewish women that would be matched to me in my state.

But, since no one (are you listening, eHarmony?) has provided a better tool - it's the best that can be done right now.

Enjoy!

Postscript: I just reran the worksheet to figure out how many new dates I should get from an area (using my criteria) per day. This figure was much more accurate.

It could be luck. (And this is not a small possibility.) Or it could rely on eHarmony's definition of a "member". Are members who once signed onto the site, but canceled still considered "members", despite the fact that no current member can have a match with them?

We don't know. And eHarmony is, unfortunately, unlikely to tell us.