Slashdot Mirror
Man Uses Drake Equation To Explain Girlfriend Woes
artemis67 writes "A man studying in London has taken a mathematical equation that predicts the possibility of alien life in the universe to explain why he can't find a girlfriend. Peter Backus, a native of Seattle and PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick, near London, in his paper, 'Why I don't have a girlfriend: An application of the Drake Equation to love in the UK,' used math to estimate the number of potential girlfriends in the UK. In describing the paper on the university Web site he wrote '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.'"
Common, this is just a stunt in order to get his picture all over the net in order to find a girlfriend !
He must count on the fact that girls will try to prove him wrong or that girls will be pleased to be the one in a million girl.
Brilliant tactic although... ;-))
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
What about...
fraction of women who would find him attractive.
fraction of women who are hetro/bisexual.
fraction of women who wont think hes a dick for assuming love is as easy as guesstimating a few numbers.
The pdf:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/phd_students/backus/why_i_dont_have_a_girlfriend.pdf
After getting Fox news coverage and front page Slashdotting N* is
now significantly higher than the paper estimate. Think 10-100x.
f(L) is fraction of people in London from N*. Why limit
yourself to London? You or your partner might move, travel,
visit friends, soon even if you're looking for love!
Even within London, the author doesn't count people movement -
those who come to London over time.
Further, the author forgets that most all people *like* to find
productive partnerships. Unlike SETI, where we have no evidence
that the other party is looking for us, we know that women like
to find great men just as much you want to find an "attractive,
age-appropriate woman with a University education".
Worst, the author spent time write why he "can't find" a partner
when he would be better served getting out there doing activities
he loves with other people and having a great time life. Then
other people will find him, and help find others.
Truly be yourself and it is uniquely attractive.
Writing a paper relating love to reason and math may actually change the probability. Love is not reasonable and can not be reasoned with.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
He's set personal standards that are virtually impossible to meet. That would be his problem, not the female population's.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
[Drake calculated that] of the 30 million women in the UK, only 26 would be suitable girlfriends for him.
There comes a point where being too particular about a mate becomes an evolutionary disadvantage.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
This guy is being too picky and unwilling to compromise
This is taken directly from this episode of This American Life with Ira Glass.
-l
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He should try lottery or SETI@Home next. From TFA:
But in the end Backus defied the odds. Asylum reported that Backus has a girlfriend of about six months. "She's from London," he told the Web site. "And she meets all my criteria."
Good for him, but not very good for his theory...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
This bodes well for the possibility of finding alien life.
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
What's the mathematical odds that he might be gay? (Not that there's anything wrong with that)
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
...the chicks actually dig intelligent guys.
Really.
So do chicks from just about any eastern bloc country for that matter.
http://xkcd.com/384/
Congratulations, you can google some numbers and stick them into a formula. You're brilliant, and it's oh so funny to come up with bullshit statistics like "only 100 times more likely than finding intelligent life in the universe".
I'll wager his value for "penis" is too small and "dick" too large... Oh the irony.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Oh come on, it's obvious. He doesn't have a girlfriend because he is the type of guy who would use the Drake equation to figure out why he doesn't have a girlfriend. Duh.
One of the reasons he can't find a girlfriend is because he is one of those people who USE the Drake equation. But seriously, look at his Criteria.
Backus found that of the 30 million women in the UK, only 26 would be suitable girlfriends for him. His equation looked at the total number of women in the country, then narrowed it down using relevant factors including the number of women in London; the number of "age-appropriate" women (those aged between 24-34); women with a college degree; and those who Backus would find physically attractive.
Okay - so how do you POSSIBLY apply a statistical analysis on something as subjective as a womans physical attractiveness?
Wasn't this done on the big bang theory?
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
It is intuitively obvious that anyone who's inclined to "use the Drake Equation to explain girlfriend woes" is significantly less likely to have a girlfriend in the first place.
#DeleteChrome
He did provide rock-solid proof of why he has no girlfriend. Sure, it's not the reason he though it was. But hey, lots of things were invented by accident. Like rubber, and the space shuttle!
WTF. This belongs in idle where I won't see it.
Warwick is near London? Who wrote this summary? I know Coventry is the city that dare not speak its name, but this is ridiculous.
http://www.xkcd.com/384/
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I know the whole thing is probably not to be taken too seriously, but looking at the paper I would say there are at least a couple of shaky assumptions.
First he's defining a rate of people who live in London. That ignores people moving in or out, or even people willing to move closer. So the figure should be higher I think.
Then he mentions he will only find 5% of "physically attractive" candidates. In other words, he is limiting himself outside of 2 times the standard deviation of the population. That's a really sample of the population. In other words, guy's too picky :-)
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Perhaps he would do a lot better if he stopped refusing to date non-aliens?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Something similar was done in 1999. http://en.nothingisreal.com/wiki/Why_I_Will_Never_Have_a_Girlfriend
He is studying at the University of Warwick, which is near Coventry. It is far away from London. He is "studying in London" in the same sense that all Californians are residents of San Francisco. Has FOX News' target audience never heard of any English city besides London?
the real reason is: who want to date someone who uses the drake equation to find this stuff out?
Apparently he has no attraction value, since that is also one of the keys of finding a potential girlfriend. Anyone with sufficient attraction (for instance, fame, money) would be hard-pressed to escape from potential suitors/stalkers/paparazzi.
From here.
I guess it's not exactly the same, as the previous one didn't use the Drake Equation...but close enough for me to raise an eyebrow.
If you were Bacchus.
All I know is, if a girl asks you how much you love her, using a pie chart is not the way to go.
...and I'll bet he lowered his. Asylum reports Backus has had a girlfriend for six months. Or maybe his GF *is* an ET alien. Did you ever see Laliari in the movie Galaxy Quest? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-vccWZPSyQ @1:50 Backus asserts he is "mostly a heterosexual male". Why the ambiguity? Is he pondering that he's a lesbian trapped in a man's body? Woody Allen understood the Drake Equation: "The good thing about being bisexual is that it doubles your chance of a date on a Saturday night."
Birth is the leading cause of death.
Hmm, or am I wrong?
I only can find this one: http://xkcd.com/384/
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The problem is looking for an English girl. They think they are much better looking than they really are, and expect too much. It would be more interesting if he compared the chances of Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
hmn.
on the one hand, his heart must be *truly* klingon, and on the other, his heart must not be *truly* klingon.
Hooters hooters, yum yum yum.
Hooter hooters, on a girl that's dumb.
What's all this education he's looking for?
Well, if he correctly applied the Drake Equation, it seems the equation is wrong - the odds are clearly much higher than the equation predicts.
But more likely, the formula makes assumptions his case doesn't meet, or he did it wrong.
Non-story.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Pesonally, I think he doesn't have a GF because he's the type of geek who thinks of explaining why he doesn't have a GF with the Drake equation
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
The problem is exactly in the question. . The chance of *finding* love is infinitesimal. The possibility of *making* it OTOH....
He's going to end up with a BIG FAT OVERBEARING girlfriend and eventually 10 kids.
His equation was
G = R * Fw * Fl * Fa * Fu * Gb ... where Fl was the fraction of UK women living in London. Except ... wouldn't the fact that he's already in London (and therefore not sampling women across the whole population) mean that he's only sampling women from London anyways? Would that make that term drop out? I guess I misunderstand its application.
Also, I suspect his Fb (fraction he finds attractive) is ... underestimated. Would he really only find 5% physically attractive? I'd expect most men to consider any woman who's even above average to be attractive. 5% sounds low, I'd think 30% to 50% (or not higher) is more likely.
He seems to have left off the fraction of those women that would find HIM attractive, but he does mention that (along with other factors) in his paper. I suspect he can't estimate those as well as the others.
Maybe if he had spent the time and effort he did writing the paper on going out and trying to find a girlfriend instead, he'd have had one?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I prefer this one:
http://xkcd.com/404/
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Which aired at least 100 years ago
What do you do when she behaves erratically? Consult Microsoft Relationship Support.
I work it in reverse. (And that does not mean "up the butt")
For every 3 girls I talk to, I'll get one number.
For every 3 numbers I get, I'll get a date.
For every 3 dates I get, I'll get a 2nd date.
For every 3 2nd dates I get I'll score.
For every 3 girls I score with I will continue to date.
So this means I'll actually have 1 in 243 chance of meeting a girl I like beyond just sex.
Given that I date about once a week (on average) that mean every 4.6 years I'll be in a relationship.
And checking my work, that works out to seem right.
I *HIGHLY* recommend the book "Mathematics and Sex" which I believe I bought because of a /. book review...
In it, it says 12 relationships is what you need to find your best match. Given 4.6 * 12, I'll be 56 before I find the one...
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I once did a similar calculation for my city of 200,000, and came up with an answer of approximately 2. At that point I concluded I would never find either one of them, and gave up.
...I read the PDF and he is trying to find an attractive girl willing to discuss his PhD work with. Another problem is he didn't include the chances of meeting such girl AND landing a successful approach (even with her finding him attractive).
The real reason he can't find a girlfriend? He decided to use the Drake Equation to show why he doesn't have a girlfriend!
(Counts on Slashdot readership to not RTFA and thus not know that he actually has a girlfriend now.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
You're wrong.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1509216&cid=30758846
But I took it a step further. As a space scientist and aerospace engineer, I even put error bars on my calculation and used Taylor error analysis... my conclusions: In the Seattle area, there are between 0 and 25 girls that meet my basic criteria, with a best estimate of 10. I found one of them... and the other day did a "probability of meeting her" analysis and found there was a 20 in a million chance we would find eachother the way we did. Pretty cool stuff!
Wow they stole this from Big Bang Theory
So why am I seeing this shit on the front page?
Where is the one who will mourn me when I'm gone
Who will pour water on my bed of dirt
Who will breathe fire on my neck at night
I heard someone say there's a chance that I will meet her
I could be Persephone and she Demeter
To pull me from the underground that I call home
Her name is no one, no one, no one
She blinds me with her eyes 'cause she's the one, the one
She lives somewhere not here, not here
Not here
My lovers are as smooth as a politician's tongue
The more I look for goodness, the more that I find none
I heard someone say, that she's honest and good.
Heard someone say, that she's honest and good.
Heard someone say, that she's honest and good.
Her name is no one, no one, no one
(Her name is...) No one, no one, no one, no one
No one, no one, no one, no one
Her name is no one, no one, no one
She blinds me with her eyes 'cause she's the one, the one
She lives somewhere not here, not here
NOT HERE NEVER HERE NEVER EVER EVER EVER!
I measure out my days with six of the Corona
I'm pretty sure she drives an old fucked up Corolla
To pull me from the underground that I call home
I've a funny feeling there's no chance that I will meet her
So I'll measure out my nights to my metronome's meter
(one two three four)
Her name is no one...
Her name is no one...
Her name is no one...
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
The math would have been even more depressing if he were gay!
Prove this, and I'll show by induction that all the positive integers are subsets of 1!
We'll share the credit!
and
11. Thou shall obey Da mighty Swing
sitting at home working on drake equations in your spare time, to explain why you don't have a girlfriend is exactly why you don't have one...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
edinburgh
and... dublin!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
36d^2 + 24x + 36 = 5'3"
this particular form was derived by an english academic knighted by the queen, a certain sir mix-a-lot
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Those two options may not be mutually exclusive.
Table-ized A.I.
He only finds the top 5% of women attractive maybe 20% of my female acquaintances (of the appropriate age group) are not attractive enough to date. And I would date them anyway if they happened to nail all the other criteria. Maybe he should have just considered that one factor to make it more likely.
Further he assumes that he is meeting people at random, which is NEVER the case. Where do I meet girls? At parties that are already pre-screened by friends or the hosts for girls within my age range and interests (most social gatherings) or education level and likely interests (most professional gatherings).
Finally, flipping my facebook status to single would activate 100+ agents (friends, family, coworkers in the area) to find the 20 or so girls that fit these criteria, not to mention that those 20 or so girls already have 2,000 agents (assuming we are not already all on the same networks as I showed in the last paragraph) hunting for me.
All that failing, I could always hit the personals to try and make contact with one of those 2,000 agents looking for me.
Anyone should be able to see from the above facts that it is extremely improbable not to have potential SOs around, which I would give some credence to from personal experience as well as the fact that he finds a girl that meets all his criteria.
1-900-699-6969 see? easy! If you dial it too often you'll go blind though
Just goes to show what a piece of bogus junk science that the Drake equation really is: raw, unbridled grantsmanship at its worst. It offers nothing in the way of predictability and only serves as a tool to entice funding from the stupid for what is, unfortunately, a worthy cause (SETI)
"Women with a college degree" so I take it people without a college degree are somehow inferior? Un-educated buffoons, no doubt!
If I were a woman and had to make the choice of a man, I think my criteria would be to avoid people with such silly stipulations.
This means 2010 is the year we make contact: He now has a girlfriend.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
What's his Slashdot UID?
of course he didn't include the odds of the other loving him back, which reduces his chances down to the same level as finding intelligent life.
I believe you're thinking of "Fermirotica", #563: "On average, someone within distance r of you is having sex." http://xkcd.com/563/
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
By the age of 31 you would think they guy would have grown up enough to realize the stupidity of this "Criteria" Those sound like the ideals of an 18 year old. And the fact that he 'thinks' he finally has a girl that is a perfect match? Anyone halfway mature realizes this guy's relationships are all doomed unless he smartens up.
...because he's too busy using the Drake equation to prove he can't get girlfriend
On the one hand his model is used to predict the chances of finding intelligent life in the universe. Lacking finding intelligent life, he's looking for a terrestrial girlfriend, the complete opposite. Coincidence? I think not.
Sitting around doing math equations... Yeah, chicks dig that. I'm guessing he didn't factor social skills into his equation.
It seems building strawmen of scientists and setting fire to them is becoming a bit of a fad on slashdot. I don't know why you are rated informative, you would have to be ignorant or naive to believe that Drake thought his equation was more than a speculative tool.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
He's aiming for sympathy sex, don't tell me you haven't tried it in one form or another. ;)
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This idea was proposed by the character Howard Wolowitz in season 2 of the sitcom "The Big Bang Theory". Am sure this was "inspired" by it. Almost academic plagiarism since there is no citation to the original proponent. Looking at his background phD candidate, academic et al (am from similar one) am pretty sure he is pretty keen watcher of the show.
...article Why I Will Never Have a Girlfriend written in 1999? I thougth that was written with a sprinkle more humor than this one.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Big fucking whoop. I did this 10 years ago in high school. At least I wasn't emo enough to write a paper about it. And in the past decade while I have been dating people I realized that the simplified model was incorrect. You assume independence, but many things are positively correlated.
A man studying in London has taken a mathematical equation that predicts the possibility of alien life in the universe to explain why he can't find a girlfriend.
Doesn't seem like much of a mystery to me.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
He treats the parameters "age-appropriate" and "physically attractive" as independent from each other. I am seriously doubt that they are for him. Furthermore: The percentage of college degrees among women is higher in the goup aged 24-34 than in the group 80+. I'm not sure he takes this into account.
If i were a young, intelligent and attractive woman, i would aim for a guy with better math :-).
CU, Martin
R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
This isn't a known number
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
This isn't a known number, extrapolating from the known systems isn't very reliable, for reference see biology
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
ok now you are just guessing. Our system seems to have 3 or more potentials. So what, you are going to apply that to every other solar system you project to find in the galaxy?
f = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
go ahead and predict your d&d dice rolls while your at it. While of course there exists a percent (total planets/ total life). But hello, you don't know the total life, or planets for that matter. So you are just conjecturing.
fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
You base this number off of what again? You don't exactly have a good sample size here considering the size of the numbers.
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space
Conjecture. Besides even if the math was known and prefect, it's still just based on probabilities. I.E, if you took the billions of galaxies, a high percent of them would have the prefect math outcome, but many many would not.
On to the FA idle math play, while he knows many more of the numbers, he also makes several assumptions. "fB = The fraction of university educated, ageappropriate women in London who I find physically attractive."
While the first 3 numbers are easily known, the " % who I find physically attractive" is just conjecture. Even if you did a study with him with 100 random women, and he liked 15% of them, that doesn't mean it would be 15% of university educated, ageappropriate women in London, maybe that subset is uglier or pretty then the larger group.
Feel free to go ahead and nitpick about how I don't understand math, how else will I learn, but the basic idea's that it's based on assumptions and bad probability math remain.
He's a economic student too. I have great respect for economics in academia, but not so much for actual economists. Partly because they love to talk about econ formulas similar to this that turn out to be wrong as often as they are right.
but what I really want to say is the Drake equation is bullshit.
Well, if he thinks Warwick is near London, maybe he's literally having trouble *finding* his girlfriend?
Haa, haaa, haaaa, haaaaaaaaaa. They dropped off 'the Earth, near Betelgeuse' from the address.
Obviously the musical got it wrong: It goes:
D'oh ...
Ray
Me
Durka-durka-durka
Its nowhere near London. In units of Englands, its about 1/3 of an England further North. Not near London at all - its much closer to Birmingham, the 2nd city.
On a world-wide scale, yes the University of Warwick is near London, but then so is Africa.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
"The probability of finding love in the UK is only about 100 times better than the probability of finding intelligent life in our galaxy.'" 100 times an approximately zero probability is not a very optimistic chance
My ex-girlfriend *was* an alien. Or looked like one anyway. Now what are the chances of that Dr Drake?
[anecdote]An old friend of mine was regarded by females as the best looking male in the universe - think young John Travolta. He lost his virginity at 13yo to a 19yo model. He was (is) also a very charming and charismatic guy. He left school early and worked in a very sexy industry and was literally buried in beautiful girls. He f*ck*d and dumped all of them, sometimes having sex with 2 or more per day (this was pre-AIDS too). I was so jealous you would not believe it.
He did live with some women for extended times in relationships and eventually settled down quite a lot. He was hurt once while very young as I recall. But he did not marry until quite late, to a younger woman with her own career. They split up because "she" did not want to settle down and placed her career first.
So, despite his 10+ attractiveness rating, we both have ended up alone, though he has had a lot more sex along the way.[/anecodote]
and cast your net further afield. American ladies love the accent and you can increase the chances of landing a bite from one you won't throw back by some simple pool selection. Universities are a good place to start. Whilst I would imagine that people with degrees are generally more intelligent than average, it's a pretty crude benchmark for intelligence. I have no degree (currently studying part time for a maths degree) but I consider myself more intelligent than a friend of mine with a 2:2 in Media, Culture and Communication.
pfft, his equations and assumptions are unfounded, he doesn't cite his sources and is far too depressing, which should further lower his chances.
A scientifically sound, really hilarious article is here:
http://en.nothingisreal.com/wiki/Why_I_Will_Never_Have_a_Girlfriend
There are all racial physiognomies in Moscow - most notably blond transparent Scandinavian-looking honies, eastern looking former CIS girls, brown skinned girls, olive skinned Georgians. When it is hot they wear skimpy clothing. Not many fatties (before they get marries at least). And a good age range too. The singles can keep looking good even into the 40s (lack of UV from the sun this far North).
You want a 10 with a PhD in neurosurgery and a brilliant classical pianist to boot? No problem, you could find one in Moscow. I wish I was in a position to do more about that.
My thought is that this might show a weakness in the Drake equation.
I think he just proved there is not much intelligent life on earth.
"The probability of finding love in the UK is only about 100 times better than the probability of finding intelligent life in our galaxy"
Assume the chance of finding love in the UK is 10%, then the chance of finding intelligent life anywhere in our galaxy is 0.1%.
That makes intelligent life on earth (subset of our galaxy) less likely than 0.1%!
That explains a lot...
I think a big part of why she likes me is because
Dammit, I can't even talk about a girl I'm not really into without my brain shutting down.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Dunno if it has already been posted but I would like to draw your attention to work done in the late 90s by a dude named Tristan Miller on the subject: http://en.nothingisreal.com/wiki/Why_I_Will_Never_Have_a_Girlfriend
Du kan glomma dina ensama stunder, du kan lita paa teknikens under - Wilmer X
Women all over now know he is about to get his PhD. Gold diggers from all over should be knocking down his door.
If you want to get a date, stop being a wuss. Be funny. Be confident. Bathe.
It's not difficult to get women once you know what they want.
Start with David DeAngelo's Double Your Dating. Stuff works.
Here's a freebie: It's not them... it's you.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
He's trying to find a GIRLFRIEND, not a wife. Obviously, one would assume that the girlfriend might eventually become a wife, but since we're still at the girlfriend stage, the numbers can be adjusted a bit. Remove the college degree requirement and the attractive requirement, and there will be plenty of opportunities. I can certainly understand why someone is finding it difficult to find 30 year old, college educated, attractive women available who is also interested in return.
Remember... if at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Backus found that there are 26 women in London who match his outrageously narrow criteria. He doesn't have to search all of the UK, just his own city. Now if he searches for them by randomly calling numbers in the phone book and asking the answerer if she's the one, then yes it will take many years to find her. But if he networks a little and asks the answerer if they might know the woman he's searching for then he'll find her much faster.
Or maybe he can do something crazy like hang out around a university where those intelligent, educated, interesting women might already be. Or go to social gatherings with people his age, where the population is already self-selected for women meeting his age, geographic, and availability requirements. Neglecting the factor of locality and self-selection is like declaring that the International Space Station has only a 0.00000003% chance of harboring intelligent life since it's just one of billions of objects in the galaxy.
Or maybe this genius should try Internet dating. There are 26 fabulous women whom he's a perfect match for within ten miles of him. If he posts on the most popular dating sites, what are the chances that one of them will find him there within one year?
And remember, that's 26 perfect women in London even if he's attracted to only 5% of the highly-educated women his age. Seriously? Who here found only 5% of their gender-appropriate college classmates attractive? And he narrows the pool twice, supposing that only 5% of the women that he finds attractive will find him attractive. That ignores the correlation of people being attracted to mates that match their own racial, genetic, and social background. Bumping those numbers to a more realistic 25% would give him 657 wonderful, beautiful, interesting, intelligent, friendly, available, captivated, local women to date.
Planet Money Podcast on NPR did this same calculation about 6 months ago -- seems this guy ripped them off
The mistake is presume that the factors are independent of one another. When you assume independence you can take the logical intersection of the probabilities which is multiplying less-than-unity probabilities together. You can obtain a rather small result choosing enough factors. But if the factors are correlated, the correct mathematics is the largest probability number. Both the astronomical conditions and girlfriend factors are correlated to some degree makeing the results less than valid.
This is the identical mistake made valuating debt securities. The mathematical underpinning was that you can offload most of the risk into a "junk tranch" by assuming failures like foreclosures are statistically independent. By "drake equation magic", i.e. multiplying probabilities to obtain the group probability, the group risk appears rather small. Independence is a decent assumption during good economic times because economic failures are more individual luck or actions. But during a recession, economic failures are correlated, making the group statistical model invalid. The so-called good-risk securities turned into garbage and the junk securities became gold.
I fear since a economics grad student does not understand probability like so many of his peers, this does not bode well for the future economy.
Lots of hand-waving, not published in a peer-reviewed journal. Garbage.
All you need to do is start being active, go to places where women are. The more you go, the bigger the chance is to meet someone. If you go out 10 times/year, it's gonna take you 5 times longer to get a girlfriend than if you go out 50 times/year. It's all about probability, and the more you try, the bigger the probability will be that you will meet that special someone.
But Tim Minchin already explained this.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
No No No! (work with me here)
Y'all missed the really important part.
1> He determined that his chances of finding a girlfriend were 100 times less likely(*) than finding an alien civilization.
2> He found a girlfriend
3> He also found 100 alien civilizations and the govenrment is concealing this information.
4> He is keeping silent because his "girlfirend" is actually a really hot alien babe. She does not appear in photgraphs so it is a matter of conjecture as to her exact species. My source speculates that she is either an Orion slave girl, an Azerothian succbi, or a rare pygmy Na'vi.
(*) I know he claimed the inverse of this, but given the massive fudge factors involved in any solution of the Drake Equation, and realize that a piddly four oprders of magnitude is nothing to worry about. ALso remember points 3 and 4 above.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
I think what you're confusing here is girls IN Soviet, or any other kind of, Russia/Eastern Bloc, and the girls you meet in the West (usually, the US, Israel, Germany, Canada, or Australia) who are FROM there.
The girls FROM Soviet Russia, et al, who tend to be from highly intellectual, extremely educated, intelligent, professional, etc. Jewish families (and nowadays some non-Jewish ones, as well), with overrepresentation of engineers and scientists among them and in their families, do indeed "dig intelligent guys" (and I say this who is one, and I'm pretty sure I've never dated a guy with a less than exceptional IQ or without a higher education). And the married couples you meet out West who were married in Soviet Russia, and might have led you to this belief (brilliant scientists and engineers happily married to each other, etc.) are again a product of their environment, where these same people all went into the scientific research institutes and met each other, residing entirely within "math is cool" cocoons.
However, those girls are not any more common than other smart, educated, bright, scientifically inclined girls. They are relatively common within their communities, but those communities are fairly limited in size (and ethnicity does matter...).
However, the tall, blond, confident, athletic, sexy, and otherwise model-attractive girls IN Russia, as a general population, are not any more interested in "intelligent guys" than any other group of girls (unless the "intelligent guy" happens to come with a US passport, which is another story). Oil barons and soccer players, on the other hand...
I read this a while ago.
This is nothing. 30 years ago (yeah! Im THAT old. Now get off my lawn and listen to this story from the street, damn kids!) I used to live in an extended family home, with several cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents. Needless to say, there were insanely competing demands on my time! So I came up with a classic game theoretic model to with weights for how much I could piss off which family member, and weights for my own priorities - study, goofing off, that kind of stuff. Earlier, where most family members were mad with me, and some were super happy. But after this model, everyone was equally happy with my ability to help around. I soon rose, much to my cousins' wonderment, to be the family alpha teen :)
I hate to break it to him but British chicks have no interest in American men unless they are black. I went there with a couple of friends back before we even tarnished our image so badly as a country under Bush and it was nothing doing. One of my friends was a very attractive guy (of latin decent) who women find easy to talk to and charming and he scores without any hassles in the US but he could barely get a British chick to talk to him. We did some experiments with going up to women in clubs and just asking them to dance to see how much we got rejected. It was quite the laugh comparing notes. In any event, we did notice black Americans didn't have the same problem at all.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?