
Why I don’t have a girlfriend: An application of the Drake Equation - kqr2
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/phd_students/backus/girlfriend
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cduan
When 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
Yep. 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
He 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>

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bendtheblock
* 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.

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cpach
This is the third submission of this article in a few days:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1031898>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1030950>

Please do a search on <http://searchyc.com/> before submitting articles.

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mitko
Whoever 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.

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bdfh42
Annoying landing page to get to the PDF article but amusing when you get
there. Now you can play - "spot the faulty assumptions".

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joss82
Do 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.

~~~
mixmax
I've lived in London, and to be honest I found far less than 5% of women my
age attractive.

~~~
Danielks
Are you 70?

~~~
mixmax
When I lived there I was around the average age of pornmodels and supermodels.

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snitko
I've recently written an "An accurate description of a potential person to
share some lifetime with": [http://romansnitko.posterous.com/an-accurate-
description-of-...](http://romansnitko.posterous.com/an-accurate-description-
of-a-potential-person)

My friend says I'm gonna be sooo single.

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scotty79
Amusing idea but theory that underlies calculations is full of unreal
assumptions. Let's consider spherical cow in vacuum instead.

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jacquesm
This has been posted twice in the last month.

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Mz
The 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.

