A first year in texts

I have some long-overdue news to share! I mentioned in this post last August that things had been going well with one of my OkCupid dates. They still are :). We’ve been in a relationship for over a year now, and I’m still crazy about him.

Recently, I exported all of our texts to .csv to see if I could find anything interesting. Here’s what I found. I’ll use the results to share a little more about our relationship.

Year Overview

txtsperweek2

As you can see from this graph, our relationship moved rather quickly. We moved in together less than four months after we started dating. The graph has two major peaks: one at the beginning, and one the week when we were moving in together, when we were figuring out all the necessary details. Not surprisingly, after we moved in together, we texted a lot less. Since then, we tend to exchange around 10 to 40 texts a week. I suspect this pattern will continue in the future.

Who texts the most?

TxtsPerMonth

Every month, I consistently sent fewer texts than he did. On average, he sent 26 texts per week, while I sent 22.

TxtLengthPerMnth

My texts, however, were generally longer. Mine were 53 characters long on average, while his were 50.

Most Common Phrases

Him Me
Phrase Count   Phrase Count
I miss you 19 i miss you 12
u got it babe 6 i’m not sure 10
i hope you are having a nice day 4 just leaving work now 7
how are you going 4 on my way home 5
how is your day going 3 have a good sleep 5
you got it babe 3 i miss you too 5
at the library 5
i’m just heading home 4

From this you can see we miss each other frequently and I’m often on my way home, unsure or at the library. I find it amusing that “babe” was one of his most common words, when he would never call me that in person.

Smileys and Sad Faces

Number of texts containing a smiley or sad face

Type Him Me
🙂 74 67
😦 26 8

Number of texts containing multiple smiley or sad faces

Type Him Me
🙂 1 8
😦 0 0

We sent a fairly similar number of smiley faces, but he sent more than three times as many sad faces as I did. This was somewhat surprising to me because I think I’m gloomier than he is. I was much more likely to send multiple smiley faces in one text.

To conclude, his texts are smilier and more frequent. Mine are longer and more likely to contain multiple smileys. What does all this tell us about our relationship? Perhaps not a whole lot, but I at least enjoyed putting it together.

The Code

Here is the R code I used to create most of this analysis. I used Jihosoft to export my text messages as a csv and I used the text analyzer at online-utility.org to find the most common phrases.

library(ggplot2)
 library(plotly)
 packageVersion('plotly')

#Read in text data
 texts <- read.csv('C:/Users/Documents/Project Support/Blog/2017/07 July/sms_20170720.csv')

#Convert dates from factor to date
 texts$Date <- as.Date(texts$Date, format = "%d/%m/%Y")

#Get month and week of text
 texts$Month <- as.Date(cut(texts$Date, breaks="month"))
 texts$Week <- as.Date(cut(texts$Date,breaks="week",start.on.monday = FALSE))
 texts$Count <- 1

#Change in/out to him/me
 texts$Sender[texts$Type=="in"] <- "Him"
 texts$Sender[texts$Type=="out"] <- "Me"

### Graph count of texts ###
 #Get count of texts by month and week
 CountByMnthSender <- aggregate(Count~Month+Sender,texts,sum)
 CountByWeekSender <- aggregate(Count~Week+Sender,texts,sum)
 CountByWeek <- aggregate(Count~Week,texts,sum)

### Graph by Week
 green <- rgb(4,185,56,max=255)
 blue <- rgb(0,195,189,max=255)
 coral <- rgb(242,119,111,max=255)
 grey <- rgb(89,89,89,max=255)

##Color Bars
 CountByWeek$Color <- grey
 #First Sleepover
 CountByWeek$Color[CountByWeek$Week=="2016-08-07"]<-blue
 #Moved in Together
 CountByWeek$Color[CountByWeek$Week=="2016-10-16"]<-coral
 #Kaikoura Earthquake
 CountByWeek$Color[CountByWeek$Week=="2016-11-13"]<-green

##Change Hovertext
 CountByWeek$MyText <- ""
 #{Decide what to call first sleepover}
 #First Sleepover
 CountByWeek$MyText[CountByWeek$Week=="2016-08-07"]<-"First Sleepover"
 #Moved in Together
 CountByWeek$MyText[CountByWeek$Week=="2016-10-16"]<-"Moved in Together"
 #Kaikoura Earthquake
 CountByWeek$MyText[CountByWeek$Week=="2016-11-13"]<-"Kaikoura Earthquake"

p2 <- plot_ly(CountByWeek, x = ~Week, y= ~Count, type = 'bar',text=~MyText, marker = list(color = CountByWeek$Color) )%>%
 layout(title = "Texts Per Week")
 p2

##create legend
 #empty plot
 plot(1, type="n", axes=FALSE, xlab="", ylab="")

#legend
 legend("topleft",
 c("{First Sleepover}", "Moved In Together","Earthquake"),
 col=c(blue,coral,green), pch = c(15,15,15),
 inset = .02, bty = "n")

#Graph by month and year
 ggplot(CountByMnthSender,aes(Month,Count,fill=Sender)) +
 geom_bar(stat="identity",position='dodge') +
 ggtitle("Texts Per Month") +
 theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5))

### Graph average length of texts ###

#Get text length
 texts$Length <- nchar(as.character(texts$Message))

#Get average text length per month
 LengthByMnth <- aggregate(Length~Month+Sender,texts,mean)

ggplot(LengthByMnth,aes(Month,Length,fill=Sender)) +
 geom_bar(stat="identity",position='dodge') +
 ggtitle("Average Length of Texts Per Month") +
 theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5))

###Calculate number of texts per week per person
 TxtsPerWeek <- aggregate(Count~Sender,CountByWeekSender,mean)
 AvgTxtLength <- aggregate(Length~Sender,texts,mean)

###Count texts with :) and :(
texts$Smile <- grepl(":)",texts$Message,fixed=TRUE)
texts$Frown <- grepl(":(",texts$Message,fixed=TRUE)
SmileTxts <- aggregate(Smile~Sender,texts,sum)
FrownTxts <- aggregate(Frown~Sender,texts,sum)

##Count texts with multiple :) or :(
texts$SmileCount <- str_count(texts$Message,":[)]")
texts$MultiSmile <- texts$SmileCount > 1
texts$FrownCount <- str_count(texts$Message,":[(]")
texts$MultiFrown <- texts$FrownCount > 1
MultiSmile <- aggregate(MultiSmile~Sender,texts,sum)
MultiFrown <- aggregate(MultiFrown~Sender,texts,sum)

Dater’s Index

Emily McDowell at mcsweenys.net chronicled her experience with online dating with her Dater’s Index. Here’s a selection:

  • Number of first dates I went on from the Internet between January 2009 and November 2010: 40
  • Percentage change over the previous decade: +3,900
  • Estimated percentage of profiles containing the description “fun-loving”: 80
  • Estimated percentage of people who do not actually love fun: 0
  • Estimated percentage of single people in Los Angeles who both work and play hard: 85
  • Number of first dates resulting in trips to the E.R.: 1
  • Estimated number of times I swore off online dating: 5
  • Number of first dates it took before meeting the right one: 39
  • Number of times we flaked out on each other before we actually met: 3
  • Time, in months, that we have now been happily living together: 9
  • Likelihood, in percent, that I will tell you online dating is the best thing ever: 100

Find the full version here.

OkCupid – 6 Weeks In

OKC Pic.jpg

Six weeks ago, I signed up for OkCupid. It’s my first attempt at online dating and also the first time I’ve actively tried to date.

Here’s how the numbers stack up:

Number of first messages I received:………..61
Number of first messages I sent:……………….0
Number of first messages I responded to:..8    (13%)
Number of first messages I received
that were one word long: ………………………….12    (20%)
Number of one word long first
messages I responded to:…………………………..1    (8%)
Total number of likes I got: ……………154
Total number of likes I gave: ………….4
Total number of 1st dates: …………….3
Total number of 2nd dates: ……………3
Total number of 3rd dates: …………….1
Total number of 4th dates: …………….1
Total number of 5th dates: …………….1
Total number of 6th dates: …………….1

Total number of one word long first messages that I responded to
that resulted in a 6th date: ………………….1  (100%)

So far, online dating has been surprisingly easy. I went on dates with three entirely decent guys. I’ve had no bad dates and one is going unexpectedly well! It’s still really early and anything could happen, but I’m excited to see where it leads.

Everyone’s in a relationship but me…

Scrolling through Facebook, seeing so many pictures of happy couples, wedding photos and smiling babies, I feel like I’m the only one who isn’t in a relationship. Logically, I know this isn’t true, but judging by what I see on Facebook, I feel like I’m in a tiny minority.

Perception

I wanted to get a more accurate idea of the real proportion of singles to non-singles. Since I don’t tend to be jealous of people much older or younger than me, I focused on my age group, using my high school senior class as my sample population.

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A Little Experiment: Reality Checking My Critical Thoughts

“No guy would ever date a girl with thighs as huge as mine.” I realize the ridiculousness of this statement when I see it written down, but I’m guilty of this and many other equally preposterous thoughts. I bet I’m not the only one. Some days, I’m convinced I have some specific flaw that is repelling all guys. Even though my logical side knows it’s not true, emotionally, it’s hard to convince myself otherwise. To gain some perspective, I took an objective look at this reoccurring thought. I split it into two hypotheses to investigate:

  1. My thighs are bigger than anyone else’s.
  2. Women with large thighs are not in relationships.

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