10 ms·
Optimizing Your Wife
- ckopec 17y agoDoesn't this problem basically take the Feynman restaurant problem and replaces meal with woman? http://www.feynmanlectures.info/exercises/Feynmans_restaurant_problem.html http://www.feynmanlectures.info/exercises/Feynmans_restauran...
- SlyShy 17y agoIn short, no. You are calculating the expected value differently in the two problems.
- presidentender 17y agoThe difference in this case is that you can't switch back to a woman you've already "sampled." With Feynman's restaurant, we can sample ten dishes, and choose the fourth dish for the rest of eternity. With the wife selection algorithm (a modification of the "Sultan's Daughter" problem) we're only allowed to marry the current candidate, or take a pass on her. Exes are off-limits.
- secretasiandan 17y agoI believe this problem is a lot closer to the Secretary Problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem As he notes however, he does not try to choose "the very best candidate", for which the optimal solution is to pass on the first 1/e candidates. Instead, he tries to maximize the "goodness" of his wife selection. In short : maximum likelihood soultion is to pass on (1/e)*N, minimum mean squared error solution is to pass on sqrt(N). This of course assumes you can estimate N well.
- SlyShy 17y agoCould this be applicable to search ranking? Say I was doing a search based on an input string, and I had a "closeness of match" heuristic. That expected value for N=100 case seemed so good that I'm considering the possibility that you only partially search any data set and return a result that is pretty much good enough. (At least initially, and then you could asynchronously add better results to the list, in the background. Then you'd get very fast first results, at the very least).
- markbnine 17y agoThe title is off. This is a wife-selection algorithm. If anybody has real ideas for optimizing a wife, please post. Also, if you do apply this method, don't tell your perspective wife. She will drop you like a rock.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- ableal 17y ago> If anybody has real ideas for optimizing a wife, please post. "Rub her feet." (http://www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/lazlong.html http://www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/lazlong.html)
- Dove 17y agoThe quality of your wife is 40% who you are, 20% who you choose, and 80% how you conduct yourself during courtship and marriage. Overlap due to some correlations and the fact that it's easier to screw things up than get things right. To pre-optimize a future wife, focus on being a man of character. Sacrifice for noble goals, exercise self-discipline, show love to family, especially your mother. To optimize an existing wife, continue to do those things, and also spend a lot of time together, be romantic, communicate honestly and frequently (pursue intimacy; resolve to hold no secrets), and ensure a good sex life for her--which for you means generosity and an eye toward emotion.
- alttab 17y agoI upvoted you but would also like to say that this comment is severely under-rated. It is very obvious to me that you know what you are talking about.
- mtw 17y ago"The quality of your wife is ... 20% who you choose" doesn't make sense to me. Or does that imply that if you sacrifice for noble goals and be a man of character, you'll automatically meet a good quality wife?
- joezydeco 17y agoWhy did this remind me of the "Ten Women" game? http://www.davidlouisedelman.com/uncategorized/ten-women/ http://www.davidlouisedelman.com/uncategorized/ten-women/
- ecommando 17y agoYou're mistaken... The mere fact that you've done this, and gone public with it, guarantees that you'll be single for the rest of your life ;-) Just kidding. Nice work!
- weeksie 17y agoFunny, but the reason my relationships have gotten better over time has just as much to do with how much I've grown as it does with my partners.
- presidentender 17y agoI can't recall where I've seen this before, but it's http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SultansDowryProblem.html http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SultansDowryProblem.html, the Sultan's Daughter problem.
- pmichaud 17y agoHow Not to Optimize your Wife: Using Calculus. Geeks though, you gotta love them.
- kraemate 17y agoDupe. I really dont think this deserves a repost. Was on the front page just some months ago.
- Frazzydee 17y agoWhere? http://searchyc.com/submissions/%2522mathpages.com%2522?only=domain&sort=by_date http://searchyc.com/submissions/%2522mathpages.com%2522?only...
- jqueryin 17y agoThis is all well and good, but doesn't take into account that your ideal wife won't want YOU.
- iacvlvs 17y ago"Will want me" is a necessary criterion for my ideal wife!
- hendler 17y agoWould my wife use this to optimize her husband? I mean, is the optimization mutual?
- angelbob 17y agoI don't see any gender differences in the OA that would be important. If a woman is willing to similarly watch for the best man and choose him when she meets him, she should use the same algorithm.
- jamesshamenski 17y agoThe author is so gonna get laid after writing this! He should publish it in Vanity Fair.
- Pistos2 17y ago(I would have sent this in private, but found no contact info in the respective HN profiles.) To Dove and lotharbot: Thanks so much for your comments in this thread. They are extremely insightful, and resonate strongly with my own experiences of married life, which is nearing a decade in length. I always admire and am inspired when I see examples of good marriages. <insert politically correct well-wishing here>
- lotharbot 17y agoThank you.
- aliston 17y agoI take issue with this step: "Thus, as k increases, the left side approaches 1, and we can take the exponential of both sides to give..." k/k-1 -> 1 in the limit. The problem is that most people don't have an infinite number of women to choose from, so k/k-1 is likely NOT sufficiently close to 1. The algorithm then takes the exponential of both sides, making the matter worse... So, based on the average number of serious girlfriends the average person seems to have before getting married (~4), the average person probably shouldn't pass on the first N / e... they should probably pass on something more like the first N / (e^1.3) or so.
- akkartik 17y agoRelated: the mathematics of 1950s dating. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/academic/class/15251-f07/Site/Materials/Lectures/Lecture09/lecture09.pdf http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/academic/class/15251-f0... [pdf]
- rbanffy 17y agoThis kind of mathematical advisor could be a differentiator in the dating-site market. Any HNers working on one?
- weirdkid 17y agoI wonder if this will fit on a Valentines Day card...
- 3ds 17y agoit's also a good example how heteronormativity works
- asimjalis 17y agoThe article also applies to picking business opportunities. Suppose you are going to see N opportunities. According to the article you should pick the best opportunity so far after N/e have passed. Some questions this raises: (a) How do you really know if an opportunity (or a wife) is any good? The evaluation function seems to be a key ingredient for success. (b) What if N is infinite. (c) More realistically, suppose N is very large. Suppose I am going to see an opportunity a day. If I live for another 40 years, that 14,610 days. So N = 14,610. Doing the math the article is saying that you do nothing for about 15 years. And then pick the best opportunity you have seen so far.