5 ms·

A fun math question (interview?): let's say you want to meet someone and you are in a bar in SF. What are the odds? 1) The population of sf 800,000. 2) Ok, b

A fun math question (interview?): let's say you want to meet someone and you are in a bar in SF. What are the odds? 1) The population of sf 800,000. 2) Ok, but 1/2 the population isn't into you. (male vs female). 400,000 3) Ok, but people under 20 and people over 30 you aren't interested in. A 10 (ten) year span of average age of 70. But hey we are friends here so lets do 1/5. We are down to 80,000. 4) Ok, but how many people in that time frame are not in a relationship. %10 (pulled from my facebook). Ok, that is down now to 8,000. 5) Ok, but you are into people that are physically fit. That removes %50. You are down to 4,000. 6) Crap. You like college educated people that have a job. Now you are at another %50 loss. 2,000. 7) Ok, but you are in a bar. What percent do not go into bars? %50 loss. 1,000. 8) But you are in a bar @ saturday at 8pm. People go out let's average 1 time a week (thur,fri,sat). That is another %66 loss. Down to 330. 9) You are in a particular bar. There are ~600 bars in sf., with only 330 people in SF that meet your criteria. They will not be wearing a sign. 10) So, there you are, buying $8 beer #4, standing in a bar hoping to meet someone - that statistically isn't there. => Online wins.

azernik 9y ago
Cliff?
kfk 9y ago
For some. For me I go to a hiking or cooking event and I get 1-2 potential dates. There is a lot of noise on Tinder and similar, lots of people with interests too different from mine and lots of people that go there to just waste time. I realized the best way to find a partner was to do things I enjoyed with other people (meetup works well for this), I found my girlfriend 3-4 months after that "strategy" change. => Bayes theorem wins
- cableshaft 9y ago
  I went through a Meetup phase (still an organizer of one) and went to a ton of meetups, met a lot of women, dated a few...but still ended up in a long term relationship with someone I met on an online dating site. Oops. I still say going to those meetups made me much more comfortable talking to and getting to know women better, which probably allowed the relationship to progress to the point it has today (almost two and a half years now).
opportune 9y ago
You're being overzealous narrowing the search space because you're assuming independence between these traits. In particular, you first assume we are only considering those between the ages of 20 and 30 in sf. But among young people this age in sf, I assume >%50 are physically fit (if by that you mean not fat/"normal"), >50% are college educated and have a job; also, in my experience, the percentage of people in a relationship varies hugely between the ages of 20 and 30 (from <20% to >75%). And of course, since SF is the center of an urban area, many people commute into SF to both work and have fun / go to bars. And here's a quick sanity check: spend a day walking around a large tech company like FB or Google. You'll easily see over 330 people at each company that meet all your criteria (except perhaps living in SF proper).
- peter303 9y ago
  Correct. Ignoring dependence caused the 2008 financial meltdown. Mortgage securities were created assuming mortgage failures were independent, when in a financal meltdown failures are highly correlated. In math terms this is difference of a product of numbers less than one or the minimum of numbers less the one. The latter can be substantially higher than the former.
in_cahoots 9y ago
I know you’re being tongue-in-cheek, but this is the sort of back-of-the envelope calculation that’s easily disproven with a simple sanity check. By your math there should be only 0.5 fit, college-educated single people in your age and gender bracket in any given bar on a Saturday night. That’s obviously not the case. One clear flaw is that the bar-hopping population is not uniformly distributed between ages 0 and 80; it obviously starts around 21 and tapers off at some point. Not to mention the fact that bars have clientele; a bar that’s popular with 20-somethings won’t be as popular with the older crowd. Fitness, age, education level, and employment status are also correlated with each other. The solution? Keep your eyes open when you’re at the bar, and strike up a conversation. Other single people will be doing the same, greatly reducing your odds of a mismatch. Fitness, age, and gender are also relatively easy to measure on average. It takes some effort, but it’s not a complete crapshoot as your comment indicates.
- ransom1538 9y ago
  "By your math there should be only 0.5 fit, college-educated single people in your age and gender bracket in any given bar on a Saturday night. That’s obviously not the case." You left out "not in a relationship" which I would give a %90 reduction in odds. Which is a major point here. Because you see people at a bar I wouldn't assume they are single.
  - Judgmentality 9y ago
    Why do you think 90% of people are in relationships, especially at such a young age? I'd guess it's closer to 2/3, although I'm using anecdotal evidence.
  - in_cahoots 9y ago
    Perhaps you’ve misread, that’s included in the ‘single’ part. Regardless, my larger point is that when you’re at a bar you’re not going to walk up to a random table and ask a guy out when he’s holding hands with some girl. People who are single and looking do just that - they look for signs that the other party may be interested. It takes some social skills, but as the original article shows a large proportion of couples meet in a bar, so clearly it’s not impossible.
irrational 9y ago
Being San Fransisco, wouldn't the percentage of the population not into you be even higher? If you are gay you can toss out all the straight people and vice versa. And that's not even taking bi and trans into account. I would guess in SanFran only 1/4 of the population would possibly be into you.
aquarin 9y ago
Why you don't just estimate the average expected occupancy of a bar?
astura 9y ago
We aren't comparing being a barfly with online dating, we are talking about online dating replacing how couples traditionally meet - which has been mainly through friends or through family. BTW, it's pretty easy to get dates in most social places (not just bars, but bars are included) if you have good social skills. Having good social skills also makes other aspects of your life better in as well. Problem with online dating is it seems to make people fickle and overly critical, which is the reason I gave up online dating. Few years later I meet my spouse, in a bar.
- soylentcola 9y ago
  > Few years later I meet my spouse, in a bar. Was he/she surprised to see you? That must have been awkward...(kidding, of course) I mostly missed online dating the first time around, but after getting out of a long term relationship last year, I gave it a shot. Seemed to at least be a way to improve the statistical side of things. I agree that it can make people fickle and critical. It often seemed as though people treated it like window-shopping on Amazon. I'd certainly never run across the phenomenon of "ghosting" in more traditional dating compared to online dating, but sure enough, you could go out with someone several times and enjoy yourself...only to have them drop off the face of the earth as their interest moved on. I certainly didn't expect to be of interest to everyone (or even many at all) but while I can handle polite rejection as well as anyone could expect, the frequency of ghosting was a real surprise. Still, there were positives. Went out with some lovely people who I would still consider friends or at least friendly acquaintances today. Met one person who I'm still involved with after several months. And it just felt like an interesting and more direct way to connect people specifically looking to date. It's like being able to go to a bar or other social meeting place and then specifically ask to hang out only with people single-and-looking who you might be interested in. Doing that in the real world is a lot harder to approximate.

azernik 9y ago

Cliff?

kfk 9y ago

For some. For me I go to a hiking or cooking event and I get 1-2 potential dates. There is a lot of noise on Tinder and similar, lots of people with interests too different from mine and lots of people that go there to just waste time. I realized the best way to find a partner was to do things I enjoyed with other people (meetup works well for this), I found my girlfriend 3-4 months after that "strategy" change. => Bayes theorem wins

cableshaft 9y ago
I went through a Meetup phase (still an organizer of one) and went to a ton of meetups, met a lot of women, dated a few...but still ended up in a long term relationship with someone I met on an online dating site. Oops. I still say going to those meetups made me much more comfortable talking to and getting to know women better, which probably allowed the relationship to progress to the point it has today (almost two and a half years now).

opportune 9y ago

You're being overzealous narrowing the search space because you're assuming independence between these traits. In particular, you first assume we are only considering those between the ages of 20 and 30 in sf. But among young people this age in sf, I assume >%50 are physically fit (if by that you mean not fat/"normal"), >50% are college educated and have a job; also, in my experience, the percentage of people in a relationship varies hugely between the ages of 20 and 30 (from <20% to >75%). And of course, since SF is the center of an urban area, many people commute into SF to both work and have fun / go to bars. And here's a quick sanity check: spend a day walking around a large tech company like FB or Google. You'll easily see over 330 people at each company that meet all your criteria (except perhaps living in SF proper).

peter303 9y ago
Correct. Ignoring dependence caused the 2008 financial meltdown. Mortgage securities were created assuming mortgage failures were independent, when in a financal meltdown failures are highly correlated. In math terms this is difference of a product of numbers less than one or the minimum of numbers less the one. The latter can be substantially higher than the former.

in_cahoots 9y ago

I know you’re being tongue-in-cheek, but this is the sort of back-of-the envelope calculation that’s easily disproven with a simple sanity check. By your math there should be only 0.5 fit, college-educated single people in your age and gender bracket in any given bar on a Saturday night. That’s obviously not the case. One clear flaw is that the bar-hopping population is not uniformly distributed between ages 0 and 80; it obviously starts around 21 and tapers off at some point. Not to mention the fact that bars have clientele; a bar that’s popular with 20-somethings won’t be as popular with the older crowd. Fitness, age, education level, and employment status are also correlated with each other. The solution? Keep your eyes open when you’re at the bar, and strike up a conversation. Other single people will be doing the same, greatly reducing your odds of a mismatch. Fitness, age, and gender are also relatively easy to measure on average. It takes some effort, but it’s not a complete crapshoot as your comment indicates.

ransom1538 9y ago
"By your math there should be only 0.5 fit, college-educated single people in your age and gender bracket in any given bar on a Saturday night. That’s obviously not the case." You left out "not in a relationship" which I would give a %90 reduction in odds. Which is a major point here. Because you see people at a bar I wouldn't assume they are single.
- Judgmentality 9y ago
  Why do you think 90% of people are in relationships, especially at such a young age? I'd guess it's closer to 2/3, although I'm using anecdotal evidence.
- in_cahoots 9y ago
  Perhaps you’ve misread, that’s included in the ‘single’ part. Regardless, my larger point is that when you’re at a bar you’re not going to walk up to a random table and ask a guy out when he’s holding hands with some girl. People who are single and looking do just that - they look for signs that the other party may be interested. It takes some social skills, but as the original article shows a large proportion of couples meet in a bar, so clearly it’s not impossible.

irrational 9y ago

Being San Fransisco, wouldn't the percentage of the population not into you be even higher? If you are gay you can toss out all the straight people and vice versa. And that's not even taking bi and trans into account. I would guess in SanFran only 1/4 of the population would possibly be into you.

aquarin 9y ago

Why you don't just estimate the average expected occupancy of a bar?

astura 9y ago

We aren't comparing being a barfly with online dating, we are talking about online dating replacing how couples traditionally meet - which has been mainly through friends or through family. BTW, it's pretty easy to get dates in most social places (not just bars, but bars are included) if you have good social skills. Having good social skills also makes other aspects of your life better in as well. Problem with online dating is it seems to make people fickle and overly critical, which is the reason I gave up online dating. Few years later I meet my spouse, in a bar.

soylentcola 9y ago
> Few years later I meet my spouse, in a bar. Was he/she surprised to see you? That must have been awkward...(kidding, of course) I mostly missed online dating the first time around, but after getting out of a long term relationship last year, I gave it a shot. Seemed to at least be a way to improve the statistical side of things. I agree that it can make people fickle and critical. It often seemed as though people treated it like window-shopping on Amazon. I'd certainly never run across the phenomenon of "ghosting" in more traditional dating compared to online dating, but sure enough, you could go out with someone several times and enjoy yourself...only to have them drop off the face of the earth as their interest moved on. I certainly didn't expect to be of interest to everyone (or even many at all) but while I can handle polite rejection as well as anyone could expect, the frequency of ghosting was a real surprise. Still, there were positives. Went out with some lovely people who I would still consider friends or at least friendly acquaintances today. Met one person who I'm still involved with after several months. And it just felt like an interesting and more direct way to connect people specifically looking to date. It's like being able to go to a bar or other social meeting place and then specifically ask to hang out only with people single-and-looking who you might be interested in. Doing that in the real world is a lot harder to approximate.