At least, that’s according to the guys who run OKCupid. And they should know.

Through their oktrends blog, the geniuses behind the online dating Website present slices of the awesome amount of raw data they have at their disposal about what works and what doesn’t in the dating world.

This post, which is long but worth a good read, provides detailed analysis of male/female dating and lifestyle preferences, and argues (persuasively to me, but I may be biased) that twenty-something men should strongly consider dating women older than they are.

Several of the charts and graphs are interactive and difficult to replicate here, but I’ve pasted one chart below that overlays stated age preferences with actual messaging behavior. The data reveal that the average man sends many messages to women much younger than he is (and younger than his stated preference, even) and very few to women older than he.

Women, on the other hand, tend to cluster their messages more closely around men their own age, and send messages to both older and younger men fairly evenly on average.

The whole thing is worth a read.  And for any online daters out there, this post about what type of pictures are most effective for different genders is pretty interesting too.