Seeking Mr. 38?

I'm a words woman. I love 'em anyway you want to give them to me: clean and proper; blue; with lots of trills and thrills; with a lilt in your voice or a guttural boom. That said, I like numbers too. I even read the biography of zero once. I especially like numbers when they start bumping into my love life.

I was walking around a bookstore (see aforementioned love of words), and I came across this book tossed into the cheap bin. It was Chance by Amir D. Aczel. Scanning the list of contents, I spied a chapter about finding the best apartment, pet, or spouse. I was intrigued.

In my world, where magic and love at first sight most certainly do exist, applying probability theory to romance seemed absurd. But I'd heard about probability theory on that wacky show Numb3rs (Judd Hirsch!), so I read on. According to Aczel — I'm summarizing here — good men (apartments, cute pets) are hard to find. And when they are found, people want to grab them up immediately. So, how does one gauge if they've grabbed up the right specimen? Mathematics!

Aczel's theory goes a little something like this:

You will maximize your probability of finding the best spouse if you date about 37 percent of the available candidates in your life and then choose to stay with the next candidate who is better than all the previous ones.

What does that mean? Well, I'll apply the theory to my own life. Let's say I only think I'll meet 10 men in my life whom I would consider marrying. And at this rate, 10 is a good number. Then, according to the theory, I should marry eligible man number five, assuming that he's better than the four (I've rounded up from 3.7) who came before him. If you think you're going to meet 100 suitable mates, then you've got to endure 37 contenders before you marry the next one to come along — again, that's presuming Number 38 is better than the previous 37.

Is the theorem perfect? No. But it's probably as good as any other dating plans ... for instance, swinging a dead cat.

Carry on.

Stumble It!

Seeking Mr. 38?