If you ask Roy Den “Worst Dating Strategy Ever” Hollander, the answer is “YES [because I hate and fear wimmins].” But instead of missing the point, Jamie “Econ major” Keiles of Teenagerie does the math. Behold:

A+.

H/T Feministing.

Ah, springtime in the city. Birds are chirping, trees are blooming, squirrels are frolicking, and MATH is in the air? The Huffington Post’s “Why Dating in New York Sucks (With Mathematical Proof!) reminds me of another article in which a British economist employed Drake’s equation to figure out why he had no girlfriend. In the HuffPo iteration, Satoshi Kanazawa is presented with the question: “Is there mathematical proof that dating in New York is difficult?”

Kanazawa references a theorem proven by two dorks without dates (ahem…mathematicians in 1966). According to Kanazawa:

This applies to anything, dating, looking for a job candidate. If you have a pool of candidates that you haven’t seen and if your job is to pick the best candidate then it’s been mathematically proven that the best strategy to do is to reject the first 37% of the candidates regardless, so you just reject the first 37% of the candidates and then choose the next candidate that is better than all the candidates that you’ve seen before. So if you apply that to a dating situation that means that you have to reject the first 30% of all the people you date regardless and then you marry the one who is better than all the ones you’ve dated before.

Already, I am finding some holes in Kanazawa’s rationale. First off, if the mathematicians said your best strategy is to reject the first 37% of candidates when hiring someone for a job, then why would you reject only 30% of all the people you date? Isn’t a life partner supposed to be a little more important and hopefully permanent than your employee?

(more…)

The really rather cute Peter Backus, a Ph.D. candidate in economics in England, has boldly attempted to solve one of the great mysteries of the universe, otherwise known as “Why I don’t have a girlfriend.”

To do so, he employs The Drake Equation, which “is used to estimate the number of highly evolved civilisations that might exist in our galaxy,” he writes. “I have used this approach to estimate the number of potential girlfriends in the UK. The results are not encouraging. The probability of finding love in the UK is only about 100 times better than the probability of finding intelligent life in our galaxy.”

The equation was developed in 1961 by Dr. Frank Drake at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. The equation is generally specified as:

G = R • fP • ne • fl • fi • fe • L

where
G = The number of civilizations capable of interstellar communication
R = The rate of formation of stars capable of supporting life (stars like our Sun)
ne = The average number of planets similar to Earth per planetary system
fl = The fraction of the Earth-like planets supporting life of any kind
fi = The fraction of life-supporting planets where intelligent life develops
fc = The fraction of planets with intelligent life that are capable of interstellar communication (those which have electromagnetic technology like radio or TV)
L = The length of time such communicating civilizations survive

Backus makes the following adjustments:

G = N* • fm • fl • fA • fU • fB

where
G = The number of potential girlfriends.
R = The rate of formation of people in the UK (i.e. population growth).
fW = The fraction of people in the UK who are women.
fL = The fraction of women in the UK who live in London.
fA = The fraction of the women in London who are age-­appropriate.
fU = The fraction of age-­appropriate women in London with a university education.
fB = The fraction of university educated, age-­appropriate women in London who I find physically attractive.
L = The length of time in years that I have been alive thus making an encounter with a potential girlfriend possible.

With me so far? I am now going to attempt to apply Backus’ equation to my chance of finding a man in New York — with the following caveats. (more…)

In a society where even the most outgoing of girls succumb to insecurity by their teenage years, it’s difficult to find young female models of confidence and integrity in our popular culture. The New York Times recently explained this struggle best: “Who are you supposed to be, or to avoid becoming? A nerd? A ditz? A flirt? A tomboy? What kind of role models are those make-believe princesses, those Bratz and Barbies, to say nothing of the real-life Britneys, Lindsays and Mileys? Mean Girls, Gossip Girls, Girls Gone Wild, Girl Power, You go, girl! What’s a girl to do?”

It turns out girls need look no further than the silver screen for their answer. In the midst of a summer dominated by hulking male superhero flicks, the American Girl global-domination industrial complex franchise has released their first feature film, “Kit Kittredge.” (more…)

Math moment, brought to you in easy-to-understand cartoon format: Don’t date anyone under (your age/2 + 7).

(Quoth our tipster: “Last night at the bar some friends and I tried to figure out the upper limit of that formula. We decided it was somewhere between 60-70. A 60-year-old dating a 37-year-old wasn’t too creepy…but maybe a 70-year-old dating a 42-year-old is. It is all arbitrary and relative, I suppose — exposing our own ‘ageist’ perceptions?”)