Men follow the Standard Creepiness Rule almost perfectly when online dating

Remember that old maxim whereby you should never date anyone under half your age plus seven, also known as the Standard Creepiness Rule (SRC)?

Well it turns out the majority of men using OkCupid abide by this rule almost immaculately. Using figures released by the online dating website's founder Christian Rudder, computer scientist and data blogger Randal Olson came up with this striking graph:

Rudder collated data of the average age ranges men put in when searching for partners online, and after overlaying those figures Olson discovered that, apart from a brief 'creepy' foray in the mid-30s, the rule was followed almost perfectly.

However, one of the more interesting social norms, as Olson points out on his website, is that most men do not reach the upper bounds of the SRC (i.e. their own age minus seven and then doubled).

Olson also points out that the graph would look almost identical when applied to women.

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Thanks to Randal Olson for the permission to use his graphs.