Christian Rudder (born September 1, 1975) is an American

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

, writer, and musician.

Education

Rudder graduated from

Little Rock Central High School Little Rock Central High School (LRCH) is an accredited comprehensive education, comprehensive public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, Little Rock, Arkansas, Secondary education in the United States, United States. The school was the Little ...

in 1993. He attended

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, graduating with a degree in

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

in 1998.

SparkNotes

Rudder joined SparkNotes in October 1999, a few months after its founding. Rudder was the creative voice of TheSpark.com, which was the viral content arm of SparkNotes during the site's early rise to popularity. He became TheSpark's

creative director A creative director is a person who makes high-level creative decisions; oversees the creation of creative assets such as advertisements, products, events, or logos; and directs and translates the creative people who produce the end results. Creat ...

in March 2001. Soon after the site's sale to

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across the United States. Barnes & Noble operates mainly through its B ...

, Rudder and the SparkNotes founders (Chris Coyne, Sam Yagan, and Max Krohn) left and began working on OkCupid, a dating site. OkCupid launched in February 2004.

OkCupid

Rudder was a co-founder of OkCupid. In the years immediately following the site's creation, he worked on the front-end product and developed the site's editorial voice. From 2009 - 2011, OkCupid published statistical observations and analysis of members' preferences and connections; the blog posts were written by Rudder and gained widespread media attention. In February 2011, OkCupid was sold to IAC, the owner of Match.com and other dating properties, for $90 million. After the sale to IAC, Rudder assumed day-to-day control of OkCupid as President and General Manager until he left in 2015.

''Dataclysm''

Rudder expanded his writings for OkCupid into the non-fiction book ''

Dataclysm ''Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking)'' is a book by OkCupid founder Christian Rudder that discusses how the vast trove of aggregated online data about individuals helps explain everything from political beliefs to speech patt ...

'', which became a

New York Times Best Seller ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. John Bear, ''The #1 New York Times Best Seller: intriguing facts about the 484 books that have been #1 New York Times ...

in September 2014 and was a finalist for the

Los Angeles Times Book Prize Since 1980, the ''Los Angeles Times'' has awarded a set of annual book prizes. The ''Los Angeles Times'' Book Prize currently has nine categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award added in 1991), his ...

that year, in the Science & Technology category.

Music

Rudder played guitar in the

hardcore punk Hardcore punk (commonly abbreviated to hardcore or hXc) is a punk rock music genre#subtypes, subgenre and subculture that originated in the late 1970s. It is generally faster, harder, and more aggressive than other forms of punk rock. Its roots ...

band Pissed Officers and

indie rock Indie rock is a Music subgenre, subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand in the early to mid-1980s. Although the term was originally used to describe rock music released through independent reco ...

group Bishop Allen, both with Justin Rice on bass and Rudder and Rice sharing songwriting and vocal duties. On Bishop Allen's first three albums, Rudder played most of the instruments except drums and piano. Through Bishop Allen, Rudder has contributed to the soundtracks of the movies '' Saved'', '' Sleepwalk with Me'', '' No Strings Attached'', '' Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist'', '' Bully'', and several other smaller films and commercials.

Film work

He appeared in Andrew Bujalski's film, '' Funny Ha Ha'', as Alex, and appeared as himself in Peter Sollett's film, '' Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist''.

Personal life

Christian met his wife, Reshma Patel, at a concert in Boston. Patel ran a public relations firm. They married in 2006 and have a daughter together. They lived in the Williamsburg neighborhood of

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

for some time, but moved to Costa Rica in 2020.

Bibliography

Reviewed in:

References

External links

* - Rudder's band.
OkTrends
Rudder's blog on statistics derived from OkCupid's database. *
''Dataclysm''
Rudder's book about big data and social science at

Random House Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...

American humorists Living people Harvard University alumni 1975 births {{US-musician-stub