The Myers-Briggs classification into “types” nevertheless remains one of the most popular psychology tests today Allegedly 89 out of Fortune 100 companies, along with 200 US federal agencies including the CIA, State Department and the military administer Myers-Briggs test to better train their employees. A combination of excellent marketing from CPP and the feel-good, vague enough descriptions of the types (known as the Forer effect, also occurring in astrology and fortune telling) explains its continuing popularity in business. Indeed, accurately evaluating an individual is a hard business, especially if one chooses the Myers-Briggs like True. And that’s just one part of the story. Even under the assumption you can perfectly describe an individual in terms of personality, then assessing compatibility is a different, arguably even more complex story, as more variables come into play. The scientific backing of compatibility should therefore be even stronger. Super Crunchers Critique Ayres has simplified the case to make it understandable for the general public reading this book, most of them likely have limited “Super Crunching” or data science experience. In general, the simplification that Ayres made is a fair one. Not mentioning the exact procedure as described in part 4.1 of this article, the summary of the eHarmony patent, is a good choice to prevent this book extending over 1000 pages. We think that he is missing an important point here, people do not get matched on compatibility, they get matched on “relationship satisfaction”, how satisfied they are in any relationship Interesting is that he fails to mention the construction of factors out of all the variables resulting from the survey filled out by candidates for the program. (more…)