
How to use math to choose a spouse - _pius
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10309716-71.html?tag=rtcol;pop
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chrischen
So assuming half the population of the world are female, that would give me
3388940742. let's say 20% of them are single (no clue, arbitrary guess), that
would give a pool of 677788148 potential partners. Now probably 50% of those
are within my acceptable age range. So to get a 37% chance of finding the
"best" one in the world, I'd have to date 125516323 women and then choose the
next best one (which would take longer since I already have a pretty large
pool of exes).

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dazmax
It should be noted that this method only maximizes your chance of getting the
best one, it doesn't take into account that the second best is much better
than the worst. 37% of the time you use this method, you're just stuck with
the last one you meet.

If you want to get as good of a wife as you can, only pass up √n before
choosing the next one that is better.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem>

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TheElder
I met my wife in linear algebra.

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chrischen
>I do not believe they were married. Lol!

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schammy
I don't understand what they mean by "the next best one" after having
discarded X number of candidates. "Best" relative to what?

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gojomo
I believe the assumptions are that there is a reliable fitness function giving
an overall score, but only one candidate can be evaluated at a time, and once
you reject a candidate, you can never go back.

So "the next best one" means the first to reach a new high value after the
initial run of X. (And note that the first X candidates have no chance -- no
matter how high they score -- because you don't even start with any hint of
the overall distribution.)

~~~
jerf
It should be pointed out that while the article sort of munged this point, it
is a particular math problem in game theory that, like other game theory
problems, has applications of interest well beyond what the problem is
"about", whereas it's actually useless in the real world. (How often does
Prisoner's Dilemma _actually_ come up for you?) So, if it sounds like an
unreasonable assumption that there is a universal fitness function, well,
sure. It's a math problem, not a real description of real life. 100 potential
partners isn't terribly realistic either. It's either much lower ("the set of
people I have dated") or much higher ("the set of all people I have ever met
that might be a suitable candidate", and remember, in the face of "love at
first sight" that's a very large set for most people, well into the
thousands).

I find it sort of annoying when people propagate that error, but meh,
whatever.

