News Digest

Looking for love online? Change your name to Aardvark

Scientists have come up with a winning formula for finding love online and it has nothing to do with the way you look or your financial status. Start your name with a letter in the top half of the alphabet - from A to M. They say names starting with these alphabets get the most “looks” from others.

Starting with a screen name with a letter in the top half of the alphabet is surprisingly important - because several measures of success, such as educational attainment and income, are linked to names higher up the alphabet.

Khalid Khan, a professor at Queen Mary University of London

Professors at the London School of Medicine Khan and Sameer Chaudhry sought objective data on how people conveyed their attractiveness on dating sites, and whether others responded to it. They trawled through 3,938 studies into online dating, published in psychology, sociology and behavioural science journals. Eighty-six of these met their criteria. The numbers were crunched, resulting in what could be termed a Statisticians’ Guide to Online Courtship.