http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/page/10/ The dating website OkCupid has a blog that does the math on all sorts of things pulled from their huge pool of data. This one in particular is about the ages that people are, and they ages they will contact/message.

Of particular interest is graph "How a person's desirability changes with time", roughly halfway down the page. Women peak at 21 and drop below average at 31. Men peak at 25 and drop below average at 36. Closer numbers than I would've expected but still, men peak after women. It's also really interesting to see that women descend much further and quicker than men, never overtaking them in desirability once men reach their peak at 25. The crossover point is at age 26, when more women are open and available to him then for the reverse of genders.

Because men's dating preferences skew so young, and women's are age-equitable, men peak later, and have a longer plateau of desirability, than women.

The longer plateau is a nice benefit, but as a side idea, I wonder if we wouldn't make it easier on future young men if we stayed within our own age ranges so that there was so much competition on younger women - competition they know about and abuse, taking advantage of younger men and warping their minds before their prime, when they could realize any different.

The information is good news for me, as a man I prefer math and logic but it's hard to suppress your biology and say "Wait until you're older, when the women aren't so stuck up and you have quantifiable, desirable traits" while my body is yelling at me to get moving or get dying.

Edit: It seems like most people are stuck on the second to last paragraph about men sticking to their age range instead of massing their interests on a small percentage of women. I wouldn't mind shifting the discussion back towards the fact that we've got some more real math to back up the fact that men peak later than women, which I think is a huge factor in how men get fucked over because a lot of them don't realize they will ever surpass women (and once one locks him down into marriage he won't find out until she divorces him and he's already in decline). However, I'm happy to keep talking about the other stuff as well, it's always great to engage in discussion instead of just reading and flat-accepting everything, form your own thoughts and opinions and all that.