Secret Cello

(no subject) (re: Graph of Desire)

Ha! I know that strategy too: rank order them as they come in, ignore the first 1/e percent (roughly 37%), and then take the first one after who is your best so far.

This is probably not good dating advice, although lots of people take a far looser version, which is that there is a strong urge (and societal pressure), to settle down at a certain age, and a lot of that pressure is because the assumption that the dating pool dries up around the early 30s (which I think is kind of a wrong assumption, but whatever).

However, this formula is fantastic for finding apartments. Take an n which is the number of apartments you think you have the tolerance to look at (say 15). Look at then n/e (~5) of them without any chance of renting to get a feel for the market, and then take the first one after that that's the best.

(no subject) (re: Graph of Desire)

spidere: Isoquants! I had thought of these as indifference curves, mainly because it's my demand curve, not the production (!) of women.

susy: The idea is that each increasing number is exponentially more unlikely: somebody who's a 10 is just someone who that our intellectual minds are just perfectly matched. To put it another way, I've never met a 10 on either scale. For a long time, I believed that meeting a 10 even with complete antipathy on the other scale, would be enough, so those people would have to be very rare.

(no subject) (re: Graph of Desire)

Yeah, that's the idea. Of course, for most people, you don't really know exactly where they fall (especially before a first date), so you just take your best guess, your margin of error, and hope for the best.