The Statistics of Dating

It's the holiday season, and I know most of my single friends will appreciate this short run-down about why it's so hard to find that perfect person to take home with you for the holidays.

A brief Stats lesson first. In statistics, we represent the odds of this AND that happening* NOT as addition, but as multiplication.  The probability that a card is red is 50%, also known as 0.50. The probability that a card is a HEART, is 50% of all the red cards. SO, we represent the probability of a card being a heart as 0.50 x 0.50 = 0.25 or 25%.

See, this is NOT that tough!

So, if we want to know the probability of drawing an odd heart, that would be 0.50 (the probability that a card is an odd number) x 0.25 (the probability that a card is a heart, one in four) = 0.125 or 12.5%....

OK, let's assume that 50% of the population are male. And they range in age from 0 to 72. That means that only 21/72, or 29%, are within ten years of my age. Then assume that 35% are married, and 5% are gay.

That means out of all males in the World, only 17.4% (29% x 60%) are eligible bachelors. Only 3.75% of THOSE live in the United States. Certainly there are probably at least 2% (a conservative estimate) that have some severe emotional baggage, like recent horrible divorces, abusive childhoods, drug or alcohol addictions, psychoses, etc... 

That leaves 0.64% as eligible for dating. In other words, 6 or 7 in 1,000 men. If I am literally one in a million (and if you know me you know that is also a conservative estimate!!!), I'm going to need to date about 156 MILLION men to find the one that is right for me.

Seeing as there ARE NOT 156 million single men in the U.S. I'd better get busy. I believe I need a passport, and pronto!

Not only that, but by country the largest percentage of people are in China.  I think it might be a little difficult, to find a marriageable man in China.  What with the language difficulty and the fact that, as an American our culture is so much less advanced.  But STATISTICALLY speaking, this is where I really ought to start.

Even if it didn't work out, oh, think of the fun I would have, all the new foods I could blog about…  Hey, wait a minute!  I'm already married!  And to a man from a country with a smaller population than that of Michigan!  OK, so, never mind.

But maybe this will put someone else's mind at ease.

*  To make matters worse, the probability of this OR that happening is addition, and in general mathematics there really is no operation to cover an OR.  It's more of a logical construct, like time.  But that, my friends, would be an entirely different blog!