3 ms·

The math can't really tell you to settle down: it assumes future knowledge as to the number of people you are going to end up dating. Then in the same breath it

The math can't really tell you to settle down: it assumes future knowledge as to the number of people you are going to end up dating. Then in the same breath it suggests a strategy which will yield a stopping point that is less than the number of people you guessed you would end up dating. If there are ten people you will end up dating as your guess as to how many you should date then apparently you now stop gathering information after dating about 4 people. Lets say the next person meets the criteria gained through the first 4 dates. Then this firth person is the stopping point. You have now dated five people. So really according to the math you should have actually stopped gathering criteria at roughly two people. But then you could have settled for the third. So in that case you would have only needed to date roughly one person to gather criteria. So now you could have ended up getting matched to the second person. And if you were matched to the second person then the criteria would have been roughly one person. Basically, the length of the data collection process and the resulting selection both depend on each other.

wrsh07 11y ago
You're thinking about it slightly wrong. You want to know the number of possible people you might date. These are "dateable candidates." If that number is "n", then by the constraints given, you don't want to end up actually dating each and every one -- if the last one isn't a match, you're screwed. We can try to ground this with an example. Suppose you're a female, and you know that you want to marry someone to conceive a child together. Now, [suppose] you have until you're ~40 years old to have a kid. Then you need to find your ideal suitor slightly before that. So now, if you imagine you'll meet 10 "dateable candidates" per year, and you're just under 30, then you might estimate n to be 100. Note, the method doesn't guarantee you'll stop shortly after the 37th dateable person you meet because it might take much longer until you find someone better than the first 37. But at least you know that you've given yourself the best chance at finding the best person to have a kid with [under the dowry problem restrictions].
- JoshCole 11y ago
  But then we are back to the initial problem: we are just guessing how many people we are going to date. So its still not really true that the math supports it when dating in actual reality. There is no reason to choose two, three, four, or any other number based on math alone. There are other assumptions that this model of dating makes that also aren't well founded. For example, the probability distribution of the candidates probably isn't going to be uniform: a person who has dated one person versus someone who has dated fifty is going to have a lot of biases to the selection that the person who dated only one person didn't have at that time. What I'm getting at here is that this isn't math giving an answer. There are many different places where a person has to make leaps of faith in order to accept this model. And a person also probably needs to make a definitively incorrect guess to start things off. So if someone were to be wondering if they are being an idiot for not dumping the person they are with, who they like, for the sake of appeasing this math model? They could be prudent: and it wouldn't be going with what is supposedly going to give them a 37% shot at finding their best match. It would be not breaking up with the person they are dating.
  - wrsh07 11y ago
    It's a math problem. You make some assumptions, and then you solve the problem with respect to those assumptions. Of course all models of the world are flawed. But some are useful. If you're wondering which restaurant you should stop at on your walk from a to b but aren't familiar with the area, you might assume you should pick the next place better than all previous after walking a third of the way home. That would be a reasonable application of this model. Regarding your last point: I wouldn't base serious life decisions exclusively on an "optimal game theory" move. That would be nuts! This obviously doesn't perfectly model reality, so why act like it does?

wrsh07 11y ago

You're thinking about it slightly wrong. You want to know the number of possible people you might date. These are "dateable candidates." If that number is "n", then by the constraints given, you don't want to end up actually dating each and every one -- if the last one isn't a match, you're screwed. We can try to ground this with an example. Suppose you're a female, and you know that you want to marry someone to conceive a child together. Now, [suppose] you have until you're ~40 years old to have a kid. Then you need to find your ideal suitor slightly before that. So now, if you imagine you'll meet 10 "dateable candidates" per year, and you're just under 30, then you might estimate n to be 100. Note, the method doesn't guarantee you'll stop shortly after the 37th dateable person you meet because it might take much longer until you find someone better than the first 37. But at least you know that you've given yourself the best chance at finding the best person to have a kid with [under the dowry problem restrictions].

JoshCole 11y ago
But then we are back to the initial problem: we are just guessing how many people we are going to date. So its still not really true that the math supports it when dating in actual reality. There is no reason to choose two, three, four, or any other number based on math alone. There are other assumptions that this model of dating makes that also aren't well founded. For example, the probability distribution of the candidates probably isn't going to be uniform: a person who has dated one person versus someone who has dated fifty is going to have a lot of biases to the selection that the person who dated only one person didn't have at that time. What I'm getting at here is that this isn't math giving an answer. There are many different places where a person has to make leaps of faith in order to accept this model. And a person also probably needs to make a definitively incorrect guess to start things off. So if someone were to be wondering if they are being an idiot for not dumping the person they are with, who they like, for the sake of appeasing this math model? They could be prudent: and it wouldn't be going with what is supposedly going to give them a 37% shot at finding their best match. It would be not breaking up with the person they are dating.
- wrsh07 11y ago
  It's a math problem. You make some assumptions, and then you solve the problem with respect to those assumptions. Of course all models of the world are flawed. But some are useful. If you're wondering which restaurant you should stop at on your walk from a to b but aren't familiar with the area, you might assume you should pick the next place better than all previous after walking a third of the way home. That would be a reasonable application of this model. Regarding your last point: I wouldn't base serious life decisions exclusively on an "optimal game theory" move. That would be nuts! This obviously doesn't perfectly model reality, so why act like it does?