Why don't I have a girlfriend?
This is a question that practically every hetrosexual male has asked himself at one point or another in his life. Unfortunately, there is rarely a hard and fast answer to the query. Many men try to reason their way through the dilemma nonetheless, often reaching a series of ridiculous explanations, each more self-deprecating than the last: "Is it because I'm too shy, and not aggressive enough? Is it my opening lines? Am I a boring person? Am I too fat or too thin? Or am I simply ugly and completely unattractive to women?" When all other plausible explanations have been discounted, most fall back on the time-honoured conclusion that "there must be Something Wrong™ with me" before resigning themselves to lives of perpetual chastity.#After a short period of brooding, of course, these males will eventually come to the realization that the real reason they were never able to get a girlfriend is that they were too discriminating with their attentions. They will consequently return to the dating scene, entering a sequence of blasé relationships with mediocre girls for whom they don't really care, until they finally marry one out of fear of spending the rest of their lives alone. I am convinced that this behaviour is the real reason for today's alarmingly high divorce rate.
--Not the author, though. I, for one, refuse to spend my life brooding over my lack of luck with women. While I'll be the first to admit that my chances of ever entering into a meaningful relationship with someone special are practically non-existent, I staunchly refuse to admit that it has anything to do with some inherent problem with me. Instead, I am convinced that the situation can be readily explained in purely scientific terms, using nothing more than demographics and some elementary statistical calculus.
Lest anyone suspect that my standards for women are too high, let me allay those fears by enumerating in advance my three criteria for the match. First, the potential girlfriend must be approximately my age—let's say 21 plus or minus three or four years. Second, the girl must be beautiful (and I use that term all-encompassingly to refer to both inner and outer beauty). Third, she must also be reasonably intelligent—she doesn't have to be Mensa material, but the ability to carry on a witty, insightful argument would be nice. So there they are—three simple demands, which I'm sure everyone will agree are anything but unreasonable.
That said, I now present my demonstration of why the probability of finding a suitable candidate fulfilling the three above-noted requirements is so small as to be practically impossible—in other words, why I will never have a girlfriend. I shall endeavour to make this proof as rigorous as the available data permits. And I should note, too, that there will be no statistical trickery involved here; I have cited all my sources and provided all relevant calculations in case anyone wishes to conduct their own independent review. Let's now take a look at the figures.
Lest anyone suspect that my standards for women are too high, let me allay those fears by enumerating in advance my three criteria for the match. First, the potential girlfriend must be approximately my age—let's say 21 plus or minus three or four years. Second, the girl must be beautiful (and I use that term all-encompassingly to refer to both inner and outer beauty). Third, she must also be reasonably intelligent—she doesn't have to be Mensa material, but the ability to carry on a witty, insightful argument would be nice. So there they are—three simple demands, which I'm sure everyone will agree are anything but unreasonable.
That said, I now present my demonstration of why the probability of finding a suitable candidate fulfilling the three above-noted requirements is so small as to be practically impossible—in other words, why I will never have a girlfriend. I shall endeavour to make this proof as rigorous as the available data permits. And I should note, too, that there will be no statistical trickery involved here; I have cited all my sources and provided all relevant calculations in case anyone wishes to conduct their own independent review. Let's now take a look at the figures.
No. of people on Earth projected to 03/13/08 at 20:55 GMT (EST+5) is 6,656,496,856
We start with the largest demographic in which I am interested—namely, the population of this planet. That is not to say I'm against the idea of interstellar romance, of course; I just don't assess the prospect of finding myself a nice Pluto or NS-66 girl as statistically significant.
…who are female: 3215698964
under 15 years: 1.064 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.024 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.781 male(s)/female
total population: 1.014 male(s)/female (2007 est.)
Assuming a conservative estimate this comes out to be:
[1/(1+1.07)]*6,656,496,856=3215698964
I'd've thought that, given the title of this essay, this criterion goes without saying. In case anyone missed it, though, I am looking for exclusively female companionship. Accordingly, roughly half of the Earth's population must be discounted. Sorry, guys.
…in so called "Developed" and "Developing"countries: 1607849482
We now further restrict the geographical area of interest to so-called non-underdeveloped or non developing. My reasons for doing so are not motivated out of contempt for those who are economically disadvantaged, but rather by simple probability. My chances of meeting a babe from Bhutan or a goddess from Ghana, either in person or on the Internet, are understandably low. In fact, I will most likely spend nearly my entire life living and working in India or can be in touch with girls from North America, Europe or Australia but surely not Armenia, Somalia, Aziziza or Azerbaizan.
…currently (in 2008) aged 18 to 25: 78478899
Being neither a pedophile nor a geriatrophile, I would like to restrict my search for love to those whose age is approximately equal to my own. This is where things get a bit tricky, for two reasons: first, the census data is nearly eight years old, and second, the "population by age" tables in WP/01 are not separated into individual ages but are instead quantized into "15–19" (of whom there are 47472000) and "20–44" (population 258087600). Women aged 15 to 19 in 2001 will be aged 22 to 26 in 2008;
Being neither a pedophile nor a geriatrophile, I would like to restrict my search for love to those whose age is approximately equal to my own. This is where things get a bit tricky, for two reasons: first, the census data is nearly eight years old, and second, the "population by age" tables in WP/01 are not separated into individual ages but are instead quantized into "15–19" (of whom there are 47472000) and "20–44" (population 258087600). Women aged 15 to 19 in 2001 will be aged 22 to 26 in 2008;
Similarly girls aged 10-14 will turn 17-21 by 2008 in this group, I'm interested in dating those 18 or older, so, assuming the "11-14" girls' ages are uniformly distributed, I have some more choices add up by now.
I did not find any authentic data about 11-14 age group so will narrow down to age 22 and above. BTW don't you think a 25 Yr old moron is too old for a lovely 18. but 44 will do fine for me as I am personally inclined towards older woman but still I will cut them off
Summing up =78478899.6 Formula shown above represent old data and are for demo purpose only to sum up the concept the total sum was multiplied by 1.2 the factor by which the world population has grown since when the formula was written.
Now comes the real Gaussin Distribution.
…who are beautiful: 1785395
Personal attraction, both physically and personality-wise, is an important instigator of any relationship. Of course, beauty is a purely subjective trait whose interpretation may vary from person to person. Luckily it is not necessary for me to define beauty in this essay except to state that for any given beholder, it will probably be normally distributed amongst the population. Without going into the specifics of precisely which traits I admire, I will say that for a girl to be considered really beautiful to me, she should fall at least two standard deviations above the norm. From basic statistics theory, the area to the left of the normal curve at z = 2 is
and so it is this number with which we multiply our current population pool.
…and intelligent: 472106
Again, intelligence can mean different things to different people, yet I am once more relieved of making any explanation by noting that it, like most other characteristics, has a notionally normal distribution across the population. Let's assume that I will settle for someone a mere one standard deviation above the normal; in that case, a further
of the population must be discounted.
…and not already committed:141632
I could find no hard statistics on the number of above-noted girls who are already married, engaged, or otherwise committed to a significant other, but informal observation and anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that the proportion is somewhere around 50%. (Fellow unattached males will no doubt have also noticed a preponderance of girls legitimately offering, "Sorry, I already have a boyfriend" as an excuse not to go on a date.) For reasons of morality (and perhaps too self-preservation), I'm not about to start hitting on girls who have husbands and boyfriends. Accordingly, that portion of the female population must also be considered off-limits.
Discounting Lesbians and Bisexuals:128756
According to latest studies 8%(and increasingly increasing) of world population is homosexual and assuming 50% of those are female homosexuals. A rough figure counts to about 5% bisexuals among females. so discounting these 9%.
…and also might like me: 20421
Naturally, finding a suitable girl who I really like is no guarantee that she'll like me back. Assuming, as previously mentioned, that personal attractiveness is normally distributed, there is a mere 50% chance that any given female will consider me even marginally attractive. In practice, however, people are unlikely to consider pursuing a relationship with someone whose looks and personality just barely suffice. Let's make the rather conservative assumption, then, that a girl would go out with someone if and only if they were at least one standard deviation above her idea of average. In that case, referring to our previous calculation, only 15.8655% of females would consider someone with my physical characteristics and personality acceptable as a potential romantic partner.
Conclusion:
It is here, at a pool of 20421 acceptable females, that we end our statistical analysis. At first glance, a datable population of 20421 may not seem like such a low number, but consider this: assuming I were to go on a blind date with a new girl about my age every week, Now this population of girls comprise of age group 22-44. Also simple law of exponential decay =(1/e) says that time constant of a LR or RC circuit is measured in terms of its charge /current decayed to 67% so let us assume that 33% area in 1/e grapgh is uselss for me.
I would have to date for 4191 weeks before I found one of the 20421 . That's very nearly 80 years.
As a North Indian Drunkard,Chain Smoker and Share Market Maniac my life expectancy is arounf 65 Years. So by the time I find her I will be dead and so will be she
8 comments:
really good analysis.. :-)i am amazed that u still remember so much technical stuff..
@ankur;
this is an extension of a research paper published in 1990s by a german or may be dutch fellow.
The fundamental analysis is same and dialogs are too....
but i have changed it to indianize it and added a few new parameters..
waah waah waah ... kya khoob pakda hai ... but Gurudev don't forget the Power of ONE.
Ek boond hi kaafi hai dahi ki dahi banane ke liye ...
Whoa...thats a lot of math involved! I hope u'll achieve your mission of finding a gal before you turn 65! :)
wow, I am impressed - you got way lot of knowledge and time man - wow
@Reemas whether i have got knowledge or not thats a tricky question but yes I have got time and the reason being that I dont have a girlfriend. The time I start having a gal, neither will I have knowledge nor will I have time:-)
Hope you are not anti advertising your marriage website by commentig on this higly singularly single and anti marriage blog :-)
Here is the link to original - http://en.nothingisreal.com/wiki/Why_I_Will_Never_Have_a_Girlfriend
"As a North Indian Drunkard,Chain Smoker and Share Market Maniac my life expectancy is around 65 Years."
Dost you forgot to add one of the most important factors in here. You are a software engineer... you really think the ITeS sector will let you survive till you are 65? :) Just joking. Keep writing.
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