How It Works
Every preference in the list has a built in pass rate: the share of people who meet it. Above average height passes 35% of people, for example, while non smoker passes 85%.
Only preferences set to Must Have act as filters. The calculator multiplies their pass rates, applies the result to 10,000 people, and turns it into a Pickiness Score from 0 to 100.
Reading your results
- Reality Check: how many people out of 10,000 pass every must have at once.
- Most Costly: the must have with the lowest pass rate, which is your biggest bottleneck.
- Category bars: how many must haves sit in Physical, Social, Financial and Lifestyle.
- Optimizer tip: how many people you would regain by relaxing your most costly filter.
Nice to haves are counted but never shrink the pool. That mirrors real dating: preferences shape attraction, while dealbreakers rule people out.
What Is the Formula?
- p1 … pn: pass rates of your must haves, written as decimals (35% = 0.35).
- n: the number of must haves you selected.
- log10: the base 10 logarithm, so every tenfold drop in the share adds 20 points.
The model treats each criterion as independent. In real life some traits overlap, such as income and stable housing, so your true pool may be slightly larger.
Pickiness tiers
- 0 to 20: Very Relaxed
- 21 to 40: Moderate
- 41 to 60: Selective
- 61 to 80: Highly Selective
- 81 to 100: Ultra Selective
Pickiness Score Conversion Chart
Use this chart to translate a score into the number of people who remain out of 10,000.
| Share passing all must haves | People per 10,000 | Pickiness Score | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100% | 10,000 | 0 | Very Relaxed |
| 50% | 5,000 | 6 | Very Relaxed |
| 10% | 1,000 | 20 | Very Relaxed |
| 5% | 500 | 26 | Moderate |
| 1% | 100 | 40 | Moderate |
| 0.1% | 10 | 60 | Selective |
| 0.01% | 1 | 80 | Highly Selective |
| 0.001% | fewer than 1 | 100 | Ultra Selective |
Worked Example
Suppose you mark five must haves: above average height (35%), college educated (37%), earns $75k+ (33%), non smoker (85%) and emotionally mature (35%).
- Multiply the pass rates: 0.35 × 0.37 × 0.33 × 0.85 × 0.35 ≈ 0.0127.
- Reality Check: 0.0127 × 10,000 ≈ 127 people out of 10,000.
- Pickiness Score: 20 × negative log10(0.0127) ≈ 37.9, which rounds to 38, the Moderate tier.
- Most Costly: earns $75k+ has the lowest pass rate of the five at 33%.
Relaxing just the income filter lifts the pool from 127 to about 385 people, roughly three times as many, without touching the other four standards.