People Really Do Learn Something In College

Here’s a group of outtakes from The Case For An Older Woman. These plot women’s answers to a handful of the more lighthearted “intelligence” measuring match questions on OkCupid. The lines track each age group’s percentage of correct answers.




We didn’t include these in the original post because, frankly, they didn’t support our point all that well. Older women do better than the youngest on only half the questions, and they’rewomen reach their intellectual peak immediately after college definitely not the highest-scoring group. Women in their mid-twenties slaughter all. In all four graphs, it really does look like women reach their intellectual peak immediately after college and then slowly recede into dust and oblivion. It’s like in The Lord Of The Rings, when Galadriel (youngest child of Finarfin, prince of the Noldor, and of Eärwen, who was cousin to Lúthien, natch) resists the temptation of Frodo’s offer of the Ring Of Power and says “I will diminish, and go into the West.” It’s a lot like that. The Ring Of Power is college, and the West is dementia, or possibly the suburbs. Also, elves are cool.

5 Responses to “People Really Do Learn Something In College”

  1. OKCUser01

    This post was entirely too short! We demand more!

  2. John

    It would be interesting to see a plot of education attained vs. age for your sample. I’d be surprised if there were not also a correlation to education.

    Could it be that the mean amount of education in women in their late 20s is greater than the mean amount in women in their 30s? It’s a little hard to believe that the effect is due solely or even largely to age.

  3. I literally, for the first time in months, Laughed Out Loud!

    You guys (or gals) totally rock! You put the fun in fundamentals of online dating. (I know it’s super corny isn’t it?)

  4. Bob

    Chances are, if you did this set of graphs for men you’d get the exact same result.

  5. So obviously this article was written a little tongue-in-cheek. I’m sure people that as people hit 30 they don’t start forgetting that the sun is bigger than the earth or that dinosaurs existed. John is probably on the right track with this correlating more to education rather than early dementia. A couple more thoughts:

    1. I imagine that singles in their 30s are a smaller set than singles in their 20s, and a lot of the smart, beautiful women in their twenties are taken by 30. So what’s left is a set of women that are less attractive and less intelligent. Maybe they’re still single because they’re stupid, but they aren’t necessarily getting stupider. The stupidity just grows on the charts because the smart ones are taken.

    2. Maybe once women reach their 30s, they stop caring so much about impressing people with math questions. There must come a point in your life when you start thinking, “I don’t have time for this. Next question.”