Odds of relationship failure.
Its no secret, I am a cynic and skeptic. Its not the popular route, but its the one I have not been able to avoid.
As always I am intersted in some girl, and as always I am looking for any reason not to be. I am struggling mightily, but I am a rational person. Any rational person can make up excuses, so I'll use math as my excuse.
I think that 4% of the girls in the midwest are attractive.
I think 10% of people i meet have good personalities.
So, ignoring compatability (which we always do when we think these things out!) there is a .4% chance that a girl I meet is long term datable.
So if we factor in compatability than there is a (.4% X .4%) = .0016% chance that two people are attracted to each other both physically and on a personality level.
So for every 1,000,000 girls I meet, 16 have long term dating potential and compatability. Your odds may be higher or egad! lower depending on your standards (the 4% physical attraction odds and/or 10% personality attraction odds may be higher or lower for you).
Let's take that one step further. The divorce rate is 50%ish. We're going to ignore the small percentage of people that date for a very long time without getting married. That means for every 1,000,000 marriages, only 500,000 last. But from above only 16 should last. So out of 1,000,000 people, 499,984 people are with someone just to avoid being alone....and another 500,000 get divorced.
The point in any relationship is to make the other person happier than they would be if they were not in that relationship. It's hard to find the right person, and I refuse to be in a bad relationship. I will never be one of those 99.999% of couples that is "stuck"....I'd rather be alone, or divorced.
After typing all the above out, I find that I still haven't talked myself out of pursuing said girl. Now I just know the specific odds it won't work out...hahaha.
Have a great 3 day weekend everyone, regardless of your religion, or lack there of!...and I emphasize the latter!
posted by Greg at 9:56 AM
3 Comments:
I think your math is a bit off. Assuming your numbers are correct (4% are attractive, 10% have good personalities), I would contend this does not equal a .4% chance that a girl is datable. How, you ask? Well, the fact is that if a girl is attractive then they don't need to have a good personality. They are attractive; a good personality was not needed in order to be a popular person. Of the 4% of the girls that are attractive girls, I would imagine only 25% (or 1/4) has a good personality. That would mean 1% (1/4 x 4%) of girls (within a given age range) are long term datable, not .4%. Also, I'm not quite sure how, if you factor in compatibility, it drops to a .0016% chance that you are attracted to each other; are you saying that only .4% of girls would find you long term datable?
Anyways, let us assume 1% of girls are long term relationship worthy. Of the 295 million people or so in the US, let's assume half are women. Of that 147.5 million people, we'll assume 25% are in the datable age range which brings us to 37 million. Of that 37 million, 1% are datable; that leaves 370,000 women in the US. Of course, if you narrow that down to St. Louis (population of ~2.7 million) and perform the same calculations, you still get around 3,375 women (outside of compatibility issues) that are datable.
-D
haha, excellent points!
I am saying that based on my math,.4% of the girls I meet are long term datable.
my compatability math was based on a .4% chance that I think the girl is long term datable, and that I meet her .4% of finding me datable.
I overlooked the age issue.
The sliding scale of attraction making up for personality only works in short term situations. If the personality compatability and personality attraction is there it moves things from being short term to long term. (comfort also has this same committing affect).
i hate math, but this a good problem :)
autonews
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