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Mathematics and Sex
The way one studies patterns mathematically is by building models for the behavior being modeled. This is why most of this book is about mathematical models for interpersonal behavior. Well, that together with some amusing anecdotes that make the book a fun read even if you know the literature very well. Still, before I go any further with this review I want to remind everyone that the key question to ask oneself when reading any book that does mathematical modeling of any topic is always the same: are the models built realistic?. Mathematicians can't answer this question: only research by scientists (i.e., experience) can. Einstein probably put it best when he said:
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
While we do study models for their applicability and their eventual predictive use by and for science, mathematicians can and do also study them for their intrinsic mathematics beauty, and some of the models Cresswell discusses in this book are certainly very pretty (in the mathematical sense of beauty--because the solutions are elegant, though the pun is intended.)
As an example of what this whole subject is like let me tell you about a long-studied model of interpersonal behavior that the author discusses in Chapter 3, a chapter titled "Road Testing the Bed"--I kid you not.
"You have to choose your life mate. The rules we adopt for this model are that you will be presented 100 choices one after another, you may date them, sleep with them, whatever. But, at the end, you must say yea or nay and if you say nay, you will never see them again."
What strategy should you adopt? Well, if you wait to the end, the odds are only 1/100 that the last person is the optimal choice; ditto if you choose the first person. The modeler then asks: what strategy should you adopt for optimum results? A little bit of mathematics involving infinite series gives the answer. You can prove mathematically that the best strategy is to look at (approximately) the first 36.787944117144235 people (rounding it to, say, 37 people) and then you should choose the first person from that point on that is 'better' then the previous 37 people. This increases the odds of your finding the best match from 1% to about 37%- roughly a 37 times improvement. (In the pre-politically correct literature this model was called "The Sultan's Dowry Problem," or "The Secretary Problem"; now, alas, it is usually called simply an example of an "Optimal Stopping Problem." )
Is this a good model for how we behave? Is this a strategy that one can realistically adopt? Certainly, 100 possibilities seems like a lot of choices to have if one is not the current day equivalent of a sultan -- a movie star or an athlete. But the model is intriguing, if not totally realistic and applicable.
Models that spring from modification of the rules of the Sultan problem have always been one of my favorites in this area. This makes Chapter 3 my favorite chapter: it is chock full of goodies with lots of interesting variations of the original problem, and thus even more interesting models. Some may be far more applicable. For example, if you get to play the cad and can keep potential mates 'stockpiled,' then, by stockpiling seven potential mates, there's a strategy that you can use to increase the odds of finding the best one to 96% or so! Or, in another variation of the model, whose solution she refers to as the "twelve bonk rule," there's a result that says that if you simply want to ensure that your choice is better than 90% of the other choices available, simply 'sample' the first 12 possibilities and pick the first person who is better after the first 12. This strategy gives you a 77% possibility of success.
I obviously can't go over all the models she builds, the interesting results she cites, or the interesting observations she makes in a review so let me simply give you some of the high points of the remaining chapters:
Chapter 1 is entitled "Love, sweeeet love" and mostly consists of showing you various differential equations that can model love's attraction and repulsion i.e. variations on standard "prey-predator models." For example, she mentions the following model of attraction:
"The more Romeo loves Juliet, the More Juliet wants to run away ... Romeo gets discouraged and backs off, Juliet finds him strangely attractive. Romeo tends to echo her..."This model gives rise to a standard and very simple first order differential equation. She then talks about more sophisticated versions of this model including one by Rinaldi that tries to model a famous love poem by Petrarch. (Personally, I think these models are only useful for learning differential equations but don't shed much light on the problem.)
Chapter 2 is called "Marriage and the Happily Ever After" and describes models for behavior in a relationship, including an analysis of how absurd the folk tale is that more sex occurs in the first year of marriage then in all subsequent years combined. Probably the most interesting work she talks about in this chapter are the models by Guttman et al. intended to analyze conversations between lovers to determine if the relationship is on the rocks. In this case the models they build are known to be highly accurate in predicting problems in the relationship.
Chapter 4 is entitled "Dating Services -- are you really being served?" and it has a fascinating analysis of the perils of questionnaires that try to match too many variables (i.e. why those questionnaires don't help that much). As she points out, this is called the "curse of dimensionality" in the literature. The problem is that if you are trying to determine whether two points are very close in n-dimensional space where n is large, you are unlikely to get a whole lot of difference between points and so closeness doesn't really matter much.
Chapter 5 is called "Pairing Up," and shows how Game Theory can (should?) enter into the problem of "choice" preferences. This chapter is a very nice gateway into models that are studied in the greatest depth in economics; there is an incredibly interesting literature on these issues. One should start with Arrow's paradox on voting (that most logical axiom systems for building choice models are actually inconsistent and can't simultaneously be satisfied) and then work up to real problems with how congressional seats are allocated in the United States. Wikipedia has good articles to start with on these models.
Chapter 6 is called "Action Reaction Attraction" and is about ways to model people's attractiveness. This means things like symmetry as a cross cultural model for beauty, and waist-to-hip ratio for females as a cross-cultural model for male choice. Whether these models are correct is an extremely active area of research in anthropology and evolutionary psychology. The jury seems to still be out, but the evidence for their truth is certainly growing.
Chapter 7 is called "Pick a Sex, Any Sex" and is a tantalizing hint of what the mathematics of evolution is all about. In particular this chapter includes a nice discussion of how sex itself can evolve. (It seems paradoxical that the question of how sex itself can evolve is not yet resolved. After all, in a naive "selfish gene" approach to evolution, it would seem seem that asexual methods of reproduction win hands down. But, as usual, the issues are more complex then naive models would predict. For example, who would have thought that parasites might be the reason sex arose? Again, for more details on the science behind the models the author discusses, you can start with a useful Wikipedia article. Ridley's popular science book called the Red Queen (or anything by Maynard Smith) is where to go next.
Chapter 8 is titled "How Ovaries Count and Balls Add Up," and is about models for feedback levels of hormone concentration and circadian rhythms and didn't particular interest me.
Finally, Chapter 9 is called "Orgasm" and I'm not going to summarize it, since that would be telling.
To sum up, is this book perfect? No. I think more mathematically literate people would like appendices which give some indication of the deeper math behind what she discusses. For example, the math that shows why the answer I gave above to the Sultan's choice problem really is approximately 36.787944117144235 - or more correctly n/e, where e is the base of natural logarithms and n is the number of choices one has to go through, is well within the reach of any 2nd year calculus student. The differential equations she introduces in other chapters can be understood by anyone with a good engineering or math background. The game theory and even a proof of Arrow's theorem should be accessible to any literate person etc. As is, though, anyone with even some knowledge of or interest in mathematics will find this book great fun.
You can purchase Mathematics and Sex from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
69 :D
hey baby, I'll be your derivative so I can be tangent to all your curves.
+5, Truth
Well I guess this does prove that old saying. "Sex sells"...Books.
Just think of all the pick-up line possibilities...
The movie Beautiful Mind on the life of John Nash present a scene in a bar where he gets his novel idea (which led to a Nobel Prize).
A beautiful women with 3 of her (so-so) friends, 4 guys. If we all go for the cutie, her friends get no attention, go away and we all lose. If we each take one (a guy being luckier than the other), every girls feels she get attention we all 'win'.
Is this scene true or pure romanced fiction? In any way, a good representation of Math + Sex (if this is possible).
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
Ok, how many other people immediately did a google search to see how attractive she really was? The first link gives a decent picture of her. She's cute.
"You have to choose your life mate. The rules we adopt for this model are that you will be presented 100 choices one after another, you may date them, sleep with them, whatever. But, at the end, you must say yea or nay and if you say nay, you will never see them again."
What strategy should you adopt? Well, if you wait to the end, the odds are only 1/100 that the last person is the optimal choice; ditto if you choose the first person.
The 1/100 chance that the last person is the optimal choice assumes there exists one optimal choice in the original batch of 100 in the first place.
Any pictures included?
I'd like to run a model on her and show her I'm a standard deviation.
The Integral of e to the x equals f of u sub n,
which looks like
Sex = Fun.
Wow. Ascii sure takes the fun out of a high school math joke!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
the only thing that you are really interested of this article: a photo of her
Make It Secret . Free JavaScript implementation of AES for your browser
And what is sexual behavior but the most intriguing pattern of all?
Apparently he never saw Pi.
sig?
Come on, you know you were curious! Here's the author, Clio Cresswell.
The majority of women just find introverted science/tech/math types unattractive.
In addition to "How 'bout you plus me subtract our clothes, you divide your legs and we multiply", I can use the less cheesy "Hey baby, I'm a mathamatician"
Oh, yeah.
-kwy
gives whole new meaning to the squeeze theorum and the chain rule.... :-p
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
55 degrees to the right going parallel to the ground and perpendicular to the target. Heading on the z-axis, you must obtain a constant velocity otherwise you cannot break the force threshhold. Sigh, so many bad things that math should not be mixed with. Im sorry but fractals do not stimulate me in that way (although there better than fat women!).
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
Didn't I see this movie in the 80s? "Weird Science"?
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
While This movie about John Nash did show how you can use math to get sex, it sadly came at the expense of the man's sanity.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Studying mathematics is often a sure-fire way to never get sex.
I keep getting a negative number. . .
...especially the detailed, in-depth research into topics such as "fluid-damped, mutually exciting, pair-coupled oscillators."
Mathematics: The lesbian sister of biology - P Griffen.
Waddya know, Kevin Smith was onto something.
Christian Jones
Medicine. Mathematics. Mediocrity.
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?article ID=2004-12-10-2
Finding supports anecdotal evidence and reinforces evolutionary theory of human mate selection
Betterhumans Staff
12/10/2004 3:20 PM
Men don't want to marry powerful women, shows a new study that supports anecdotal evidence and reinforces evolutionary theories of human mate selection.
The study highlights the importance of relational dominance in mate selection and discusses the evolutionary utility of male concerns about mating with dominant females.
"These findings provide empirical support for the widespread belief that powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less accomplished women," says social psychologist and study lead author Stephanie Brown of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Subordinate attraction
With the help of a grant from the US National Institute of Mental Health, Brown and coauthor Brian Lewis from the University of California, Los Angeles tested 120 male and 208 female undergraduates by asking them to rate their attraction and desire to affiliate with a man and a woman they were said to know from work.
"Imagine that you have just taken a job and that Jennifer (or John) is your immediate supervisor (or your peer, or your assistant)," study participants were told as they were shown a photo of a male or a female.
After seeing the photo and hearing the description of the person's role at work in relation to their own, participants were asked to use a nine-point scale (in which one is not at all, and nine is very much) to rate the extent to which they would enjoy going to a party with Jennifer or John, exercising with the person, dating the person and marrying the person.
Brown and Lewis found that males, but not females, were most strongly attracted to subordinate partners for high-investment activities such as marriage and dating.
Cautious investors
"Our results demonstrate that male preference for subordinate women increases as the investment in the relationship increases," says Brown. "This pattern is consistent with the possibility that there were reproductive advantages for males who preferred to form long-term relationships with relatively subordinate partners.
"Given that female infidelity is a severe reproductive threat to males only when investment is high, a preference for subordinate partners may provide adaptive benefits to males in the context of only long-term, investing relationships--not one-night stands."
According to Brown, the findings are consistent with earlier research showing that expressions of vulnerability enhance female attractiveness. "Our results also provide further explanation for why males might attend to dominance-linked characteristics of women such as relative age or income, and why adult males typically prefer partners who are younger and make less money."
The research is reported in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior (read abstract).
...ask 20 girls, one always says "Yes!"
Are you differentiable? Because I want to be tangent to your curves!
Looks like we've found a slightly confused answer right here.
What is so interesting about sex? This is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to use mathematics to sell a book on sex to the enourmous geek market. Shameless exploitation I tell you! Real geeks want Pi not Pie.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
She was so dumb, she slept with the mathematician after she was done with the writer.
I'd say if you're this into mathematics, than you'd be pretty lucky to have 100 women to choose from in your lifetime.
After all, you can't have sexagesimal calculations without 'sex'. In fact, mariners have used SEXtets for ages! There is no shortage of sex in mathematics, just shortage of people using them.
So my real question is: .50444432954739
How can we apply algebra to this?
x = male orgasms/week = 1
y = number of men = 1
z = number of women = 1
b = male orgasm length in seconds =
c = probability of woman achieving climax = ?
c+(x+b) = ((yb)/z)c)
fluid-damped, mutually exciting, pair-coupled oscillators.
Reading that gave me as much entertainment as I had from the ages of 1 to 19.
Or maybe I'm just being irrational.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Was my personal favorite in college;-) (An, come to think of it, before and after college too!)
"how absurd the folk tale is that more sex occurs in the first year of marriage then in all subsequent years combined"
It is a well-documented dietary fact that a woman's lack of sexual desire is caused by the consumption of wedding cake.
Mathematics and Sex.
:)
It's nice to see two different slashdot articles complement each other so nicely.
Here is a bio page with photograph of the author, for anyone interested.
By the way: Did you see "Requiem For a Dream"? If not, do so immediately! In some ways even better then Pi!
XoloX
Using a word like juxtaposed won't do much for you, either.
A universe of numbers that represents the global economy, millions of humans hands at work, billions of minds, a vast network, screaming with life - an orgasm. A natural orgasm.
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
My old phone number was: 4643. I'd tell girls for sex for free, and they'd say WHAT?, I'd repeat 4643, and they'd go Oh.
God spoke to me.
and remember this is the land of Nicole Kidman
0 41 2064418512>
Just to spite the poster, I thought I'd point out this article:
<http://news.mcmedia.com.au/story.asp?TakeNo=20
I think you meant imaginary.
This rating is Unfair ( ) ( ) Fair (*) Funny
Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.
Okay, this is a little off topic, but when I glanced at my RSS reader to see the latest Slashdot headlines, I was more than amused to find "What Interests High-School Students?" immediately followed by "Mathematics and Sex".
Sounds about right!
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
If the author believes sex is a pattern, that would explain his familiarity with the lack of sex, in mathematics or otherwise.
Good sex is art, not math.
Maybe a nice fractal every now and again.
paintball
Pic of book Cover
If the way congressional seats are allocated in the US bears any resemblence to models for sexual behavior, wouldn't we expect Republicans to be getting more sex, especially in Texas?
paintball
...shouldn't a book review at least mention the author's name? (I looked it up, but still...)
"Men don't want to marry powerful women, shows a new study that supports anecdotal evidence and reinforces evolutionary theories of human mate selection."
Hey! I like powerful women. they can hold me down while I'm in the throes of sex, better that the weak ones can.
from "The Cyberiad" by Stanislaw Lem
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustrum longs to be a cone
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.
For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Bools or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?
Cancel me not - for what then shall remain?
Abscissas some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
the product o four scalars is defines!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a^2 cos 2 phi!
While I agree with and enjoyed the premise of the parent post (being a fan of pop- and serious-science endeavors involving evolutionary psychology, of which "The Moral Animal" and "The Adapted Mind" were earlier explanations of the same phenoms discussed in Cresswell"'s book)
I have to point out that a typical heterosexist slant exists in a lot of these studies. What about the LESBIANS?!
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
So if you date 36 women, and the optimal one happens to be one of them, does that mean that you would now reject every single one of the remaining 64 except for the last one? Doesn't that give you a 1/3 chance of being stuck with the 100th date automatically, no matter how bad they are?
This reminds me of this clever essay someone wrote, where he determines through demographics and statistical calculus why he will never have a girlfriend.
Hilariously geeky stuff.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
How about Monty Python's Logic vs. Sex?
Kidman was, iirc, born in Hawaii, which makes her an American who only seems Australian. Kinda like Mel Gibson (born in New York.)
Add the bed
Subtract the clothes
Divide her legs
Multiply
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
...test out all 100 candidates. That way you get laid 100 times. If you just marry the 38th candidate she'll decide she has a headache every night from the moment you agree to be a 'life mate'.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The answer on the previous slashdot post.
Serge
I noone goes for the blonde, we all get laid.
Assuming an ordered set it obvious that we need to go precisely 5.212055882855765 people past the optimal stopping point. The mice told us a while ago the anwser was 42...
Given an article about a book on mathematics and sex written by any symmetrically-formed woman under the age of 40, what is the probability that:
a) the number "69" will appear among the first 10 replies?
b) a WWW image link for the book's author will appear among the first 10 replies?
c) an offer of marriage will be extended to the book's author in an e-mail from a Slashdot scribe who owns a Batman suit?
c)ii) that said scribe will brush the Fig Newton crumbs of off his Batman suit to add a sort of gallant flourish to the marriage proposal?
c)iii) that said scribe will yell up to his mother from the basement to bring more Fig Newtons?
d) that the book author will employ unusually refined anti-spam rules to filter her e-mail for the next six months?
e) that the book author is a Windows user?
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
is actually rather solvable, especially in this situation.
Most people decide to use Euclidean distance, or distance-squared. It's possible to do some statistical tests comparing it to Manhattan distance, or distance-added, and you end up with Manhattan distance often being a "better" indication. So why not exaggerate?
Take the general formula d=sum(abs(x_n^v),n=1..nmax)^(1/v). Euclidean distance is this formula with v=2, Manhattan distance with v=1. Lower v below 1 - 0.5, 0.3, or lower - and you get a distance metric that works quite well with high numbers of dimensions.
Meanwhile, back in reality, the meaning of this distance metric is something along the lines of "it's okay if there are a few major differences, as long as mostly we're a good match", as opposed to "avoid major differences at all costs" . . . so instead of getting someone who's marginally different from you in all ways, you get someone who's very similar to you except for one major difference.
Which can be interesting.
Sometimes, the kind of "interesting" that involves handcuffs . . . either in the good way or the bad way.
I don't know if any online dating sites do this or not. But they should.
(For the curious: On the surprising behavior of distance metrics in high dimensional space)
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
This isn't the norm, but I've seen it more than once. Men really can marry above their level if they give it a little effort. In fact, now that I think about it, every Slashdotter married... had to marry above their level (self included).
Chapter 7 is called "Pick a Sex, Any Sex" and is a tantalizing hint of what the mathematics of evolution is all about. In particular this chapter includes a nice discussion of how sex itself can evolve. (It seems paradoxical that the question of how sex itself can evolve is not yet resolved. After all, in a naive "selfish gene" approach to evolution, it would seem seem that asexual methods of reproduction win hands down. But, as usual, the issues are more complex then naive models would predict. For example, who would have thought that parasites might be the reason sex arose?
What we have here is a pontificator, a purveyor of much BS, a master in the art of using many words to say nothing.
a tantalizing hint of what the mathematics of evolution is all about.
A tantalizing hint? Seems like a pretty crappy chapter if all it has to offer is a hint, doesn't it? Why not just tell us? Is it because the chapter has no idea? Is it because this whole sentence doesn't mean anything at all, and you're just saying there's a tantalizing hint because you have no clue what the chapter is about and we can't prove there's no hint in there? Even if there is a hint, what if the hint is TOTALLY BORING?
In particular this chapter includes a nice discussion of how sex itself can evolve. (It seems paradoxical that the question of how sex itself can evolve is not yet resolved.
There's no paradox here - having a discussion about something that may not yet be resolved is, well, normal. Seems the author just wanted to use the word "paradoxical".
After all, in a naive "selfish gene" approach to evolution, it would seem seem [sic] that asexual methods of reproduction win hands down.
What do you mean, "it would seem"? Does it, or doesn't it? Or is the author just covering his butt because he no idea whether it does or doesn't? And why is there an "After all" in there when this has absolutely NOTHING to do with the sentence before this one?
But, as usual, the issues are more complex then naive models would predict.
Maybe because that's the DEFINITION of naive? And what issues? The author hasn't even told us what issues he's talking about! I also think this summary would have been improved if the author had mentioned that the sky was blue and the earth is down. Of course, the author probably would have said something like "And as everyone knows, the sky is not royal blue, but paradoxically, more of a turquoise, and as usual, one would find the earth, unsurprisingly, located in a direction not above them, clearly showing that the issues are unresolved."
For example, who would have thought that parasites might be the reason sex arose?
An insectophiliac? What is this an example of anyway, other than how the author may have bored their professor into passing their thesis without reading past the first page?
If you've got nothing to say, don't just spew crap. It hurts my brain.
paintball
There are many problems with mathematical modeling of human behaviour. Firstly, economic phenomena (and we can broadly characterize all phenomena as such) are not infinitesimal. They are discrete. Thus, various operations of calculus are completely invalid, as the reality of human action is not continuous, but discrete.
Secondly, human beings can choose. The reality of game theory is that it is a bunch of humbug which is often wrong, and when it's right, doesn't do any better than common sense would. In real-life situations, the only people who behave as game-theorists predict are actual game-theoreticians.
I suggest this article on John Nash and Game Theory. I also suggest this article by Prof. Murphy, and this excellent chapter on game theory by Ludwig von Mises.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Here is a picture of her. Hey, maybe she has a beautiful mind, but I wouldn't fuck her no matter how drunk I was.
What strategy should you adopt? Well, if you wait to the end, the odds are only 1/100 that the last person is the optimal choice; ditto if you choose the first person. The modeler then asks: what strategy should you adopt for optimum results? A little bit of mathematics involving infinite series gives the answer. You can prove mathematically that the best strategy is to look at (approximately) the first 36.787944117144235 people (rounding it to, say, 37 people) and then you should choose the first person from that point on that is 'better' then the previous 37 people.
Divide above by 10 for nerds, or they will die of old age before finding a mate.
but i am never going to reach the 37th woman, much less the 100th...
This was in sharp contrast to the Electrical Engineering department...
And the brethren went away edified.
That's say 1 weekend to meet someone + 3 weekend dates = 1 month each for about 7-8 years. Take twice as long and still get married by 30. The key here is that you have to commit yourself to keeping the early relationships short, or possibly juggle multiple relationships.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
(For the record, I wrote this during a second year maths lecture...good ol' vector calculus inspiring my creativity.)
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
Once again woman is reduced to a sexual object in a vain attempt to push a product. Wait a minute, that's a good thing. I promise I'll buy whatever you're selling if you blow me.
Eat PI, not read about it. Dammit.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
His search strategy is off.
Sure, a small proportion of the total population is actually eligible, but he can screen more than one candidate / day. Many will not meet his age requirements, attractiveness requirements, etc.
Apply some crypto-fu, take some shortcuts. Don't solve the problem the hardest way.
Of course, it's actually harder than he figures. I think the number of folks I could actually hang with lifetime are more than two standard deviations from norm...
And so the first proof fails.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Are you a differentiable function?
Because I'd like to be tangent to your curve.
Some chick I knew once wondered aloud "what's the difference between a cutie and a hottie?" Well...
The shape of a human jawbone is related to the amount of testosterone present during certain phases of development. Guys who have higher levels of testosterone turn out with square jaws and guys with lower levels turn out with rounder jaws.
Also, guys with higher testosterone levels are more likely to cheat on their sex partners, so from women's perspectives, over the course of evolutionary time natural selection taught women to view guys like this (unconsciously anyway) as better for short-term relationships (since they were unlikely to stay around), thus making them hotties.
On the other hand, guys with rounder jaws / lower testosterone were less likely to cheat on their partners, thus making them better-suited for long-term relationships, thus making them cuties.
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
Unfortunately it was a book on lisp. sex was the short form for S(ymbolic).ex(pression).
an account of an innuendo-laced mathematical experience
"Ask Slashdot: What Interests High-School Students?"
- and -
"Book Reviews: Mathematics and Sex"
One asks what would interest high school students in science and technology, the other provides a solution...
After all, horny teenagers are ALWAYS interested in sex...
It's off to the creep lab for you, my friend.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
"modeling evolutionary mechanisms" which was a pretty good way to make normal folk of the interesting sex keep their distance.
But where I went to school, the girls knew the math of sex very well: it was just three numbers which, much in the way that the right three numbers open a safe, could open a frat boy's wallet. 36-22-34 was a particularly effective combination.
You may take offense at the reduction of one gender's regard for another to a mere sequence of numbers but that is really the essence of the gap everyone expects between mathematical inclination which is reductionist and sexual inclination which is wholistic when its healthy.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Here's Clio's video. I'm late to the discussion, so I'm kind of surprised no karma whores got there before me!
Um. It's not a folk tale. And it's certainly not absurd.
One wild weekend in a mediterranean island: 44 times. Since then: no more than 3 times each year.
For 14 years . You do the math! Please don't mod this funny
She seemed fairly competent teacher although it was obvious she took the class at almost zero notice as a favour for someone and didn't know what the hell we were supposed to be learning. She struck me as someone more in to research than teaching, though that applies to most accedemics I guess.
I went onto IRC and for some reason, during the course of the conversation, I mentioned the fact that I just came back from a math tute which was taken by a youngish, blonde, female substitute. Since I was talking to males on IRC, someone asked the obvious question: "is she hot". My reply was something like: "she's ok I guess, nothing special... she might look better under different lighting".
Now I find out on slashdot that she was voted one of Australia's 50 most beautiful people. So now I am thinking, um, are my standards abnormally high or what? No wonder I can't get a date.
But it's funny that a woman can be standing less than two meters away from a guy for an entire hour but he won't know she's hot without slashdot. I'm not kidding either.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
so even
...Certainly, 100 possibilities seems like a lot of choices to have if one is not the current day equivalent of a sultan...
is rediculuously remote...try 10 or, like me, 1: just marry your lab partner in physic class if you don't think he/she is an idiot. You can come to that conclusion later:(
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
1 + 1 = 3
Nooooooooooooooo!
its available here: http://www.cliocresswell.com/
Applying Math to Sex is like talking about the number infinity. There are an infinite amount of numbers; the universe is expanding; etc etc etc.
You could waste time talking about it or you could actually try to do the math by solving the problem.
Stick your penis into a vagina and experience a whole new world. The final frontier for some of you.
Nicole Kidman is born in Hawaii, by the way.
...do it with models.
I once had a physics teacher who said
"Math is to Physics as masturbation is to sex"
-Q
Postulate:
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
Proof:
"You have to choose your life mate. The rules we adopt for this model are that you will be presented 100 choices one after another, you may date them, sleep with them, whatever. But, at the end, you must say yea or nay and if you say nay, you will never see them again."
ôó
I may be a geek, but I still have my standards!
"Not so hot"?
Sophie Dahl, Naomi Campbell, Keira Knightley, Kate Winslet, Natasha Bedingfield, Cat Deeley, Kate Beckinsale, etc. etc.
Which one of these turns you off then?
If you've got nothing to say, don't just spew crap. It hurts my brain.
I'd tell you to speak for yourself, but apparently you just did.
Noone really cares about posts like the one you just made. You tried way too hard to make the reviewer sound like a fool, and wound up looking like one yourself. The reviewer most likely didn't even see your comment. I, however, will take comfort in the fact that this message will be reaching you personally the next time you login, and that my anonymity will disallow any verbal retaliation from you. Now that's how it's done.
Comments by morons, indeed.
You shot a fish in a barrel.
Except it's full of soft porn, and sections where you can send in photos of your chick reclining on your car.
It probably also has a regular poll section.
:wq
... to this classic story: http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~pjbk/humour/polynomial.h tml
Say hello to my little sig.
Wrong URL. Try this one instead. And yes, she is very cute. I'd bone her. (Hey baby, wanna eliminate one of your chances of finding the wrong mate tonight? ;)
Why bother.
With a title of "Mathematics and Sex", you moderators sure know what interests us /. people.
sex * mathematics = 1.
(Translation: Sex is inversely proportional to mathematics.)
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
The author assumes that you're the only one making the decision, marriage is a two person deal what's optimal for one person might not be optimal for the other.
There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
Strangely enough, that actually wasn't offtopic this time. What's the world coming to?
but if you want to use game theory to analyze sex, here's an article about faking orgasms.
I'd bone her
I always laugh at how meaningless this statement is.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Chapter 2 is called "Marriage and the Happily Ever After" and describes models for behavior in a relationship, including an analysis of how absurd the folk tale is that more sex occurs in the first year of marriage then in all subsequent years combined. Probably the most interesting work she talks about in this chapter are the models by Guttman et al. intended to analyze conversations between lovers to determine if the relationship is on the rocks. In this case the models they build are known to be highly accurate in predicting problems in the relationship.
Maybe the writer meant John Gottman and his famous Love Lab?
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
Also, it's a mistake to assume a equal probability of matches with subsequent dates. Generally(!) people learn as they go on and even after 5 relationships your average person would have a much better idea of what they like and what they don't like and will tend to go out with people who are closer to their ideal than they would have earlier on. It becomes an optimisation problem rather than pure probability. There'd need to be some factors taken into account however like as you have more relationships that fail you might tend to be less likely to go out at all (too jaded) or too picky because you know just what you like. Or some people would purposely go out with someone who was different to the last person, on the assumption that if the last one didn't work then anything similar wouldn't work either.
:-)
Then there's also the problem that once you start to determine what a match actually is and closeness of matching then you bring up the issue of relativity and perception. For example a relationship that failed may have been very close to a match but the perception (ie what they thought they were after or would like) was invalid. Likewise some people would never go out with "that type of person" but might end up doing so and finding a match, much to their surprise, so selection criteria is an issue.
There's another factor also of time and that some people churn through one partner a month and others take years or decades or a lifetime to realise they're not with the right one and then (as mentioned earlier) they just can be bothered changing or chnage their perception and staywith what they've got. Some epople's perception/view changes over time anyway and they wake up one day and realise they're not in love and that's it and can't explain why.
Now role all this into one equation/theory and I suspect it'd be so darn complicated people will just go back to random bonking or "rules of thumb" (cough cough) which, at the end of the day, come down to a mixture of genetics and upbringing.
One final point is the "why" factor in searching for a match. (The why *after* a mtach is often different, again due to changed perspective or insight). Is the person searching because they want to leave home, want a mother figure, want children, want to control someone, want a house cleaner, want to be controlled, don't want to be alone etc etc. All these factors change the probabilities beyond simplistic calculations it seems this book covers.
Mind you for a humorous book it gets you thinking a bit
pithy comment
And your point is...?
Why bother.
What a great combination: Brains and beauty. Intelligent women are very sexy. When they're good looking, that's a bonus.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Don't know where this comes from, but the best mathematical model is the one where the age that you find girls most attractive is half your age plus 7 years. So a 10 yo boy thinks 12 yo girls are hot (10/2 + 7) A 20yo thinks 17yo girls are good, 30yo goes for 22yo, 40 for 27 etc. It works out pretty accurate.
Probably developed by mathamatitions on a Saturday night "If I could get a date on a Saturday night, what age would I go for?"
You are an idiot. The paragraph you quoted made perfect sense. You desperate attempts to pick it apart seem deranged, like the submitter is your lifelong enemy and you are desperate to show the world that you are smarter than him. I don't feel like going through all of your stupidity, so lets just take one example:
Submitter: In particular this chapter includes a nice discussion of how sex itself can evolve. (It seems paradoxical that the question of how sex itself can evolve is not yet resolved.)
You: There's no paradox here - having a discussion about something that may not yet be resolved is, well, normal. Seems the author just wanted to use the word "paradoxical".
It is a paradox because sex is an essential element of reproduction, and hence darwinian selection, and so it seem obvious that our solid understanding of darwinian selection implies a good understanding of sexual evolution; yet we don't have a good understanding of sexual evolution.
You assertion that there is no paradox because it is normal to discuss unresolved issues is nonsensical. The submitter did not assert that it was a paradox because it was being discussed, and I don't know why you would think that.
Well, D.A. had it close.
You mean I'm the only one mentally deriving the differential equation models for my partners orgasm, trying to time it perfeclty to achieve maximu...
...oh who am I kidding...
... One is the loneliest number?
Bruce
>And why is there an "After all" in there when >this has absolutely NOTHING to do with the >sentence before this one?
This is an example of why it is prudent to not behave in a sneering, boorish manner in forums.
In attempting to belittle the author you've revealed yourself to be a petty, ignorant ass. But you're in good company in these forums.
If you've calmed down you should consider that asexual reproduction, though it has an obvious and significant advantage over sexual reproduction, clearly does not win hands down, and this is puzzling.
And try re-reading those sentences you claim have "NOTHING" to do with each other.
I think that personal relationships and emotions are really far too complicated to match up to a mathmatical equation. Once we like someone, are we really willing to give that person up just in case "someone better" might come along? If we do give them up did we ever really like them in the first place? I would say that finding the optimal person is a pointless exercise in the first place, and that expecting someone to be our optimal partner just sets us up for failure when they fail (in our eyes) to live up to such optimal-ness. A more rational approach is finding someone we like enough to deal with their sub-optimal nature. I suppose this could be quantitated, but how do you do this when we each gauge a person's worth by a different set of values?
I love my husband very much (we'll be married a year on the 3rd of January) but I didn't marry him because he was the most attractive, and I didn't marry him because he was perfect (he is neither). I married him because I liked him enough to deal with his weirdness. And he married me because he liked me enough to deal with mine. But neither of us can quantitate WHY we like each other. Frankly, if we could, it would worry me.
At this juncture my husband would like to say that he really married me because he says I'm going to be a world famous (read wealthy) cardiologist some day, and that when that day comes, he can quit his job, build a state of the art gaming system, and play computer games all day for the rest of his life.
Dream on, honey.
In short, and because it's getting late, I'd just like to say that I think the concept personal relationships can be defined by an algorithm is a load of dingos kidneys, and I'll leave it at that.
Yes, there are women on Slashdot. Deal with it.
Eight something.
Say it out loud.
Of course, the author probably would have said something like "And as everyone knows, the sky is not royal blue, but paradoxically, more of a turquoise, and as usual, one would find the earth, unsurprisingly, located in a direction not above them, clearly showing that the issues are unresolved."
Sounds to me like the author is Mojo-jojo.
GENERAL PUBLIC SIGNATURE (GPS) Any replies (derivatives) of this post must also use the GPS
Anybody else notice that the ISBN number for this book contains "14159" (the first 5 deciman digits of pi)?
Before or after surgery?
"linux" is a very common word and was not included in your search.
I think it's safe to say that you can always say whether you prefer girl A or girl B; you can't tell me that two girls are equally good w.r.t. being a life partner. Let's use A ) B if A is strictly better than B. Clearly if A ) B, then it is clearly not the case that B ) A.
The question is, is ) transitive? I.e., if A ) B, and B ) C, is A ) C? I would say yes. I cannot imagine saying that I would rather marry A than B, would rather marry B than C, but would rather marry C than A. It doesn't seem possible, but perhaps you have strange preferences.
If ) is transitive, then the set of girls, G, is simply ordered by ). Not only that, any subset X has a best girl. Proof by induction:
Basis case: X has one element. This element is the best girl.
Inductive step: Suppose X has a best girl, a. Then take an element, b, in G, not in X. If b ) a, then b is the best girl in X union { b } since b ) a and a ) x for all x (except a) in X, so by transitivity, b ) x for all x in X. Otherwise, a is the best girl in X union { b }.
Thus, all finite subsets of G have a best girl. G is a finite subset of G, so G has a best girl.
Therefore, the set of 100 girls has a best (optimal) mate.
So either you believe that you cannot compare every pair of girls, or you believe your preferences in girls are not transitive. Which is it?
What are the chances that you would recognize the person most optimal for you, given the impossibility of actually finding out, i.e. living the rest of your life with each of them and then comparing? This is further complicated by the fact that while she might be the most optimal for you, you might not be *her* best choice. What you want is the person you would be happiest with who won't dump you. Where are the unknown possibilities represented here?
Also, does anyone else think this number 100 is extraordinarily unrealistic? Especially for math enthusiasts! Assuming that you'd be willing for this number of relationships to occur between the age range of 20 to 40 - where the quality of women you could attract will rise and fall, by the way - that's 5 socially intimate relationships a year (a completely unrealistic number for moi - a math enthusiast) Such a lucky bastard should have no trouble finding a worthy mate, and if he's dumb enough to jetison 37 women in a row, regardless of their worth, then I sincerely hope that the 37% chance of the best girl being in the first group comes true and he gets to spend the rest of his life comparing girl number 100 to the 50 or so who were better than her.
It seems mathematics isn't best way to find a mate! Who knew?
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
Here is her picture http://www.saxton.com.au/saxton_db_data/images/Cre sswell_Clio.jpg
Moderators please ignore karma whoring.
She's ok, but aren't there hotter mathematics/physics ladies out there?
3 32
I remember some nice looking greek lady that talked about string theory.
The author's picture is below
http://www.saxton.com.au/default.asp?sd8=2
The best posts are both flamebait and informative.
In college you learn the secrets to life itself:
The crucial dating starts after n * 1/e.
We had to do this problem in the first day of our random signals class (who said electrical engineers don't learn how to date).
Assumptions:
1 - You are given the size of the total dating population you will ever date, a priori (integer n)
2 - No two dates are of equal value.
3 - One date is your best, but all are possible compatible matches, and they all like you too (so you're always weeding out and not counting the nutjobs, golddiggers, nags, clingers, cheaters, coldfish, liars, dimwits, and dogs as part of n).
4 - The dates are presequenced in a random order by God (hence it's in a random signals class).
4 - You date each one in sequence.
6 - You know nothing about your future dates, except n from item 1.
7 - You learn everything you need to decide about this date in a reasonable time (i.e. this does not affect your ability to meet all n dates specified in 1 in the bloom of youth).
8 - You decide whether this mate is best, given what you know about this one, and all others before.
9 - You must choose that date and mate, or dump that date and move on.
10 - You cannot ever go back to choose a previous date. no second chances.
Each time you date allows you to increase your knowledge base about which one is best. But you can't date them all, or you're stuck with the last one, and there is a large (1-1/n) chance that you will not get the best one. Mathematically, the function (best I've seen so far) is convolved with (chance the best one is yet to come). It's a famous curve that peaks kind of early, and tapers off gradually.
So the more you date, the more you know, but the greater likelihood you'll be spending the rest of your life pining about "the one that got away". So you can see why some people marry early, because they generally pine away about all the ones before (remember this whole population is of people that are minimally suitable mates). Suckers.
The professor demonstrated that the crucial dating starts after n * 1/e.
Basically, you must dump each and every one of the dates up to that point, only gather information, and remember the best one. The first subsequent date that is better than that "best one" is your mate. You can stop right there, because statistically you have most likely ended up with the best one. This person may not actually be the best, but at least this one's better than all you've seen before.
This means for n=10, dump the first 2, and mate with the next one better than either of those. For n=100, you have to break 36 hearts!
Of course in real life it is difficult to estimate n. People also tend to change their threshold for minimum suitability throughout life. And it turns out that all your dates are playing the same game on you. The love of your life may just dump you one day (I never thought random signals would be such a heartbreaker).
The best thing to do is grit your teeth, and find some people who will tell you what kind of a shot you have at increasing your population. I.e. are you hot or not? Then choose your threshold and stick with it.
It's a tough thing to do, but at least now you know why the EEs (and stats majors) got all the hotties!
bb.
This lady used to be my maths tutor in 1st year university... =)
It's true! And who'dda thunk it?!
Unfortunately, the author of the review didn't actually offer much insight into the quality of the writing.
/. reader, but not for anyone who's made it past the adolescent humor phase.
Cresswell doesn't do a very goood job of integrating the actual math with the implications of the the theories. She'll say things like "Mathematicicans would use an equation that looks like this: [large integral here]", but then not explain the integral or math at all, and instead launch into a discussion of the social ramifications of the mentioned theory.
When it comes to the social aspects, she's not a very clear writer either. Her writing style can be ambiguous and make it difficult to follow her examples.
Her writing is also filled with cheap sexual puns and insinuation. Perhaps good for your average
Overall, the book had some interesting notions and some notable flaws. She didn't do anyone any favors by pointing out the scary math and then ignoring it. She could have conceptually addressed the math a little more without scaring off the math-phobic. It also could have benefited from a good editor.
(Apologies for the vague examples; I haven't got a copy of the book with me.)
Voulez-vous Cauchy avec moi? ;)
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
The Sultan problem rephrased: How many people can I screw and discard while keeping good odds of not getting stuck with someone just like myself?
Agile Artisans
This is a really poor model unless you manage to work your way through all 37 in a week end. By the time you get to number 38, even if she is only 70% as good as the previous best, (say number 9), number 38 is quite likely a decade or more younger than number 9 now is (and consequently, that much hotter), since it's taken you 15 years to work your way through 37 girl friends. So you'd do well to snap up 38, before you're too old and burnt out to land anyone even half as good as number 9 was!
....
I'd like to take the area under your curve!
no comment
In high school, I learned that beer + girls = sluts.
cold
getting warmer
so-so hot
hot!
The old joke:
"What's the square root of 69?"
"Ate something"
I dream in binary.
A tantalizing hint? Seems like a pretty crappy chapter if all it has to offer is a hint, doesn't it?
Hardly. There's a huge amount of math relating to evolution, and it's a rich field of study. In a popular science book, a hint is about all you can get. If the author does it right, of course the hint will be tantalizing.
An insectophiliac? What is this an example of anyway, other than how the author may have bored their professor into passing their thesis without reading past the first page?
I don't follow that field much anymore, but last I heard, this author is exactly right. The current best theory for why sexual reproduction exists is indeed because of parasites.
The problem is that parasites, with their short lifetimes, can evolve to pick the immune system's locks. Sexual (as opposed to asexual) reproduction scrambles the combinations in a way that makes it harder for parasites. There's even intriguing evidence for this in human mating patterns.
The author hasn't even told us what issues he's talking about!
That's because this is a book review, and not the actual book. The idea is not to tell you everything in the book, but merely to give you an indication of whether it's a book you might like. The review did that for me, and apparently it did that for you as well.
But say, since you're such an expert, I'm sure you can point us to your better book reviews, right?
Given their subject pool, this is not surprising. Men at that age are not going to be confident in themselves as older, more accomplished men.
I expect as the sample pool becomes more accomplished and confident themselves, they'll be more inclined to choose peers as mates. Not necessarily the majority of men, but certainly at a higher rate than 20 year olds who still feel the need to prove themselves.
was the actual name of an old set theory book in my uni library... had to borrow it.. turned out it didn't really make set theory any more stimulating
here and watch her video of her appearances on various talk shows, etc.
This is one hot babe!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Consider the equation
b 4i 4q r u/18
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
(from the UCSD Koala)
1. Babe, I bet you and I share the same
Resonant Frequency.
2. You put the fun in eigenfunction.
3. My love for you is invariant in every
inertial reference frame.
4. In the limit as time goes to infinity,
I know we'll converge.
5. You're prettier than all the girls on
http://www.cybersluts.com/
Reading from the Kama Sutra, Chapter 1
This excerpt came up in an interview with this book's author which you can read here
Care to malloc(4-1/2 inches)?
My function pointer may not be as flexible as your closure but it runs a lot faster.
I'd like to implement your interface.
Do you support S-Exp input?
Can I have root access to accept connections on port 69?
Clio Cresswell was the only reason I dragged my arse out of bed to get to her math's tutes at uni
I can get away with telling this, because I majored in math.
A doctor, a lawyer, and a mathematician were discussing the relative merits
of having a wife versus a mistress. The doctor was talking about stress
levels and extolling the physiological benefits of emotional stability; for
health reasons, he said, it's better to have a wife. The lawyer was talking
about legal issues and liabilities and settlements, and he claimed that it
was preferable to have a mistress.
The mathematician said it was better to have both, because that way, when the
wife thinks you're with the mistress, and the mistress thinks you're with the
wife, you can get some time to yourself and do mathematics.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
In my mind, mathematics and sex are very similar, in that I don't understand either one.
Hey, if we add both of us, and subtract our clothes, you divide your legs, then you can multiply!!!
http://images.google.com/images?q=Clio%20Cresswell &hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=wi
:n
mmmm sweet American Pi....
Pumping lemmas?
You don't need a lab to make mud.
no text
Clio Cresswell is a great ambassador for science, not least because she's so attractive. She also has an amazing gift for public speaking, and uses this not only in the university lecture theatre but also on television, on the radio and now in print. Her radio spots range from short grabs on popular stations to more in-depth (but still accessible) analysis on Australia's public broadcaster. Read some of these here, here, here and here. There's also a short interview about the book here.
Early cultures = usually patrilinear. So Hebrew girls married to Egyptian men have Egyptian babies. Jewish descent is matrilinear NOW, and some scholars believe it switched from patrilinear to matrilinear during (and because of) the Egyptian years.
The big argument was that in times of trouble, the Hebrews might join with the non-Egyptians, and overthrow the Pharaohs. So if you kill the potential warriors, you lay the seeds of...
... the fierce Jewish Mother-In-Law. I think Fran Drescher's voice can be harnessed as a sonic weapon like in the first DUNE movie!
Sorry, rambled a bit there!
All this scholarship is, of course, complicated by the complex subjects of "Biblical Archeology," and the whole lack of evidence for the Exodus story, etc, etc, Cross cultural myths, etc etc. YMMV
If I switch from being a physicist to being a mathematician then I'll be able to have some of it (sex)?
You only use 2% of your DNA
I read somewhere (where ? well... perhaps I'm just inventing it) that the fake quotes that abound in Internet are evenly shared among Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and Einstein. I guess that, here in Slashdot, there is a login bias towards Einstein
Celebrity has its shortcomings, for sure To be presumed responsible of so many "clever sayings"
Actually first cousin marriages are still a problem even if not illegal. It has been shown to give a 10 times higher chance for birth defects than pregnancies in general
If a situation were to arrise where a minimum number of people needed to produce maximum decendants in minimum time... 10 times a small number is still pretty small.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
What's the corresponding formula for ladies though?
Hey, I was wondering if you could integrate my natural log?
Baby, let's add you and me together, subtract our clothing, divide your legs, and multiply.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
..in his hand being jerked violently.
Rampant Ninja related crimes these days...Whitehouse is not the exception
He once posited that you basically figure out what attractiveness cohort you are in, and go across and start courting in the corresponding cohort of females. (If that's what you are after)
He then determined that, actually, the men in the top 10% bracket were banging everything in sight. We're actually herd animals with dominant males having harems.
I read "Waiting to Exhale", a chick book by an african american author. I was trying to broaden my horizens a bit from the white male science fiction usual suspects. (and maybe pick up some insight into female psychology) I had absolutely no sympathy for the female characters who were whining about the scarcity of absolutely perfect men, and the advantages taken by the very few who met all the criteria. There was nothing steller about any of them that would lead someone to forgoe the advantages they had. If I had dozens of not-that-special women clamoring for me, why pick just one? If you are that greedy and picky, you don't particularly deserve to be rewarded with faithfulness and devotion, you know?
Fortunately for me, I found my asperger-friendly partner. 2.5 years hitched, several years of history before that. We fit. The big thing for me is feeling like her thought processes don't make her a different species. She's also cute. Makes good babies. Is very, very tolerant. We met through a chain of geek acquantences, one introducing me to the next, until we met. My strategy - hanging out with geeks and geek-friendly women - worked out for me. Hiding in my apartment, waiting for them to seek me out - not so much.
The basic approach in the book makes some intuitive sense - try out different partners. It takes a while to figure out what will work for you, what traits you need in another person to be happy.
Learn all you ever wanted to know about the big O
The problem with trying out 37 partners first is that all of them are playing the same game, and the odds are actually pretty low that you satisfy the woman's criteria and she satisfies yours. The model is just built from one person's point of view.
"Lets go back to my place, subtract our clothes, add a bed, divdie your legs, and multiply."
regarding granger-causality, sophistication cannot convert fallacy to principle. The same could be said of the entire mainstream economics profession.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
To clarify on the self-evident (a priori) truth of the action axiom, let me explain why it cannot be tested.
In statistics, we often use a null hypothesis (default, H{0}) and an alternative hypothesis (alternative, H{a}). The null hypothsis is assumed true (I won't get into CI, alpha, or p-values, since they are not needed for this point). So, the statician would write out something like:
H{0}: x >= 6
H{a}: x 7
However, the null and alternative hypothesis must be meaningful. This is something that textbooks don't even state, because it is so obvious. For example, you cannot state, or rather, you can state, but such would be meaningless:
H{0}: x = sqrt(-4)
H{a}: x != sqrt(-4)
Saying sqrt(-4) is meaningless, because there is no such thing as a square root of -4, unless we get into imaginary numbers, such as 2i. You also can't say something like
x = my weight
H{0}: x > 0
H{a}: x a priori truths.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen