Do the Math
The ‘how did you meet’ correlation graph
Lately, a big deal has been made about the way in which people meet. Women especially, it seems, want a good “how we met” story to package their marriage in something remarkable, or at least special. But what is the reality behind the circumstances of how people meet and the quality/success-rate of their marriage? This seemed an interesting question for LITD, who polled four couples nationwide regarding their marriage quality/longevity and how it related to their initial meeting. The results were staggering.
First, the dark end of the spectrum. We might think schoolyard and childhood sweethearts are the stuff of storybooks, since they always seem to last so long. Indeed, we found, they DO last long, but the quality of their marriage is dismal – they know each other so well that they almost look through each other, and walk through life together in a sort of dismal daze. The biggest surprise were the couples who were introduced by their mother – these not only represented the most miserable marriages, but also lasted the…
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The T.J. Maxx Principle
I love to unearth a bargain. Searching out of the way shops and finding that Vivienne Westwood dress I know no one else has – at the low, low price of $20 – makes manifest the visceral thrill of the hunt, the joy of discovery.
This is no easy feat. Quite literally, each item must be poked, prodded and examined for label, fabric quality and potential defects. Even then, the chosen garment may require alterations before it’s ready for prime time. But it’s worth it when I hear the inevitable compliments, “Wherever did you get that DRESS??” and the shock when I reply, “Steve’s Discount Bait, Tackle & Pants!”
How, you ask, does this apply to dating? Posthaste, I will reveal: the T.J. Maxx Principle.
Inside every comic shop, hotel bar, or philatelist club, hidden among the spoiled tweens, fifty-something queens and larpers lurks a diamond in the rough, glittering with promise. “Don’t let my proto-mullet and 13-year-old mustache fool you. I’m hot, loaded, and great in bed – all…
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Are you worth the dough your parents (or you) threw down for school?
It’s graduation season, a time of reflection not only for matriculating seniors but, perhaps, those of us who have been in the real world for awhile. According to the Times, the arguments against going to college are gaining momentum – is a bachelor’s degree really worth the time and money? The question is particularly acute for those who enjoyed a cushy, expensive (roughly $50k per year for college and prep school), albeit good private education.
So how do you measure up? Are you worth all the hard earned cash your parents coughed up for that “Landscape and Gender in Avant Garde Cinema” class? Did your “Jungian Archetypes and Star Trek: a correlation of the mind” module shape how you think?
A LITD study indicates that a liberal arts education orgy is helpful for appearing literate and well-informed at parties, but that’s about it. Indeed, it contributes to delusion and prolonged aimlessness: according to recent polls, 84% of liberal arts graduates still think they’re in college 3 years after graduation; 60% think so…
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Graph: the career/love trajectory
“It’s not fair,” my friend sighed just before pounding the rest of her vodka on the rocks. “The more success women have in their career, the more their love life suffers.” Interesting thought indeed. My friend is in her early 40s, is a VP of a major corporation and earns mid-six figures. Her love life, however, is a hot mess, and has been since she began her ascent. This made me wonder if career-successful men were the same. After all, they are subject to the same distractions: late hours, stress, lack of exercise, travel, prostitution in strange cities like Tuscon. I called a meeting of Relationship Mathematicians to put it to the test, and what we found is striking.
Here are some of the fine points to the equation. For control, we assume a career trajectory of unsuccessful, upon graduating college, to highly successful in old age.
In college, men and women are basically in the same place, both relationship and career-wise. Upon graduating their love lives move in separate directions – hers climbs up,…
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Mathmatical Proof that Relationships are Impossible in NYC
My relationship-math colleague Satoshi Kanazawa explains, in no uncertain terms, why dating in big cities (not just New York) is so hard.
Tax season special: dating write-offs
It’s tax season again, and with a little creative math in the expense column you can save a lot of money – particularly if you’re single. This year the IRS agreed to add a dating category to your expenses, a real game-changer for those of us on the meet market. If you don’t know how it works, here’s a primer:
1. Separately from your tax form, you must place a value on the ‘good’ dating experiences you had for 2009. For each good experience (sex, laughs, a new perspective on life), put a value of 1.
2. Next, write your individual dating expenses in the right column.
3. Now take the sum of the ‘good’ experiences and subtract it from the sum of the dating expenses. This number is the amount you can write off of your income tax.
Save your receipts and DO NOT overstate your expenses. You will get audited!
Graph: love, location, and the time space continuum
“We’ve been going out for 3 months, which in New York time is like 3 years.” This comment came from a colleague during a cigarette break at last week’s Relationship Math and Statistics Convention in Belchertown, Mass . Which led to a bigger question – is there a meaningful relationship between time spent in a relationship and the city in which you are spending it? What, for example, would 3 years be in Belchertown time? We put out our cigarettes and reached for our calculators. Turns out 3 years in Belchertown in exactly the inverse of New York – 3 months. We applied the formula to every city we could think of, from Tucson to Tucumcari, and the accuracy was spot on. The formula, as we release it to the world (patent pending) is this:
Take the city’s excitement level, generally defined by choices of entertainment and population. Multiply this number by the city’s neurosis level, defined by the collective unease of its citizens, then divide by the actual amount of time one spends…
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The Rothman Graph
More often than not, men and women are ships passing in the night, never quite existing on the same level. This phenom is the subject of endless study and speculation, but never is it more the case than at the beginning of a courtship – such a delicate period of wide error margins and tricky variables.
Sounds like a job for math and statistics, and it is. I introduce to the world the Rothman graph (fig. A). Let me break it down. The Level of Interest is the amount of interest and enthusiasm (sexual or otherwise) each has for the other. The Level of Familiarity is how well they know each other, defined by time.
You will quickly notice the extreme distance between the man and woman on the level of interest in the beginning: the woman is on the lowest level while the man is that the very top. This is because men, generally stimulated and driven by visual stimuli, believes from the beginning that she is perfect for him…
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