4 ms·
Why I don’t have a girlfriend: An application of the Drake Equation
- bdfh42 17y agoAnnoying landing page to get to the PDF article but amusing when you get there. Now you can play - "spot the faulty assumptions".
- joss82 17y agoDo you really find only 5% of girls your age attractive ?! And you say you were being generous! I've been to London and the girls are not that horrible there, are they? Or was it the beer goggles? Interesting paper, though. Thanks for writing it.
- fendale 17y agoI'd go as far to say most girls around my age are attractive in some way or another, so 5% seems exceptionally fussy!
- mixmax 17y agoI've lived in London, and to be honest I found far less than 5% of women my age attractive.
- Tichy 17y agoWould be interesting to check this for real, but off the top of my head my estimate would be more like 1% (not for London, but in general). Although there was this other research that showed that men (maybe also women, can't remember) are very quick to adapt their "demands" to the available offering. That is if at a party, you might settle for someone from the 10% of attractiveness at that party, even if the attractiveness compared to the whole population might be a lot less.
- taitems 17y agoPlus the title of the page/document is "Why I don’t have I girlfriend".
- cduan 17y agoWhen this guy goes out at night, he meets a perfectly random sample of people from London, totally uncorrelated to any of his variables? Where is this stochastic heaven? The statisticians want to know! (Put another way, maybe he should frequent more singles bars in educated neighborhoods, where the clientele is of about his age and attractive to him.)
- potatolicious 17y agoYep. Thankfully, unlike the search for sentient life, there are ways we can significantly increase nearly all of his probabilities with just a little bit of thought.
- therealazeem 17y agoHe is using the wrong equation. His problem is not to do with being in stochastic hell. It is his search strategy. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
- mahmud 17y agoCheers for "stochastic heaven". Most profound concept for others to grok.
- mitko 17y agoWhoever wants to do/acomplish something finds a way. Whoever doesn't finds a reason. You have your reasons(based on faulty assumptions) so I would conclude that you simply don't want a girlfriend.
- jacquesm 17y agoThis has been posted twice in the last month.
- cpach 17y agoThis is the third submission of this article in a few days: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1031898 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1031898 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1030950 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1030950 Please do a search on http://searchyc.com/ http://searchyc.com/ before submitting articles.
- bendtheblock 17y ago* I think 5% chance of him finding a women attractive is too low. Physical attractiveness could be affected by him finding a girl that matches the other criteria. * The equation doesn't take in to account the constant influx of new people in London. And who's to say she is of British nationality? * More importantly, where does he state the chance of the 'chosen' one liking him? Further to this - and I don't want to generalise here - but in my experience, this is precisely the type of humour that women do not find funny. Finally: "on a given night [..] out in London there is [..] a 1 in 285,000 chance" Should this be in a given instance? I live in London and probably walk past 1,000 people every day. I know that's not a meaningful interaction but, using his variables, in a given day that means there's a 1 in 285 chance I walked past 'the one'. Life is cruel. As someone else has said, hang out in some university bars and break the random sample. EDIT: Grammar, spacing.
- scotty79 17y agoAmusing idea but theory that underlies calculations is full of unreal assumptions. Let's consider spherical cow in vacuum instead.
- Mz 17y agoThe author chooses to limit his options to women who already have college degrees, to women currently living in London, etc. People aren't plants or inanimate objects. They can move to different places. They can go back to school. Etc.
- snitko 17y agoI've recently written an "An accurate description of a potential person to share some lifetime with": http://romansnitko.posterous.com/an-accurate-description-of-a-potential-person http://romansnitko.posterous.com/an-accurate-description-of-... My friend says I'm gonna be sooo single.