by Max Kornblith
“If you don’t like what’s being said, then change the conversation” – Don Draper
“If you don’t like what’s being said, then change the conversation” – Don Draper
In this essay:
Aziz Ansari on luck
and dating
My “passion dilemma”
The unacknowledged
co-conspirator in life
Living with messiness
The formula for love
In the midst of a course on probability, my college
statistics professor revealed the “solution” to the problem of dating. He told
us that, upon granting a few assumptions*, search theory—the statistical
toolset honed for the rapid selection of a proverbial needle from a haystack—suggests
an optimal approach to picking a mate. Proceed through one third of the maximum
number of partners you expect to have the opportunity to date in life, he
instructed, and then, having used this experience to set a baseline, settle
down with the next candidate whose overall quality exceeds that of anyone
you’ve already dated. This approach balances the risk of settling for what’s
too easily available versus that of holding out too long for perfection.
The proposal may be computationally simple, but it raises irksome
questions:
