Why I Will Never Have a Girlfriend
02-25-2007, 05:11 AM
#1
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Why I Will Never Have a Girlfriend
I got this article in an e-mail link. I thought it to be pretty amusing. So please - read on.
Why don't I have a girlfriend?
This is a question that practically every 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.2
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 calculations3 in case anyone wishes to conduct their own independent review. Let's now take a look at the figures.
Number of people on Earth (in 199
: 5 592 830 000 [WP98, Table A-3]
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 Altairian girl as statistically significant. Now anyway, the latest halfway-reliable figures we have for Earth's population come from the United States Census Bureau's 1999 World Population Profile [WP98]. Due presumably to the time involved in compiling and processing census statistics, said report's data is valid only as of 1998, so later on we'll be making some impromptu adjustments to bring the numbers up to date.
…who are female: 2 941 118 000 [WP98, Table A-7]
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 "developed" countries: 605 601 000 [WP98, Table A-7]
We now further restrict the geographical area of interest to so-called "first-world countries". 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 North America, Europe, and Australia, so it is to these types of regions that the numbers have been narrowed.
…currently (in 2000) aged 18 to 25: 65 399 083 [WP98, Tables A-3 & A-7]
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 two years old, and second, the "population by age" tables in [WP98] are not separated into individual ages but are instead quantized into "15–19" (of whom there are 39 560 000) and "20–44" (population 215 073 000). Women aged 15 to 19 in 1998 will be aged 17 to 21 in 2000; in this group, I'm interested in dating those 18 or older, so, assuming the "15–19" girls' ages are uniformly distributed, we have
39 560 000 × ((|21 − 18| + 1) / (|19 − 15| + 1)) = 31 648 000.
Similarly, of 1998's "20–44" category, there are now
215 073 000 × ((|25 − 22| + 1) / (|44 − 20| + 1)) = 34 411 680
females within my chosen age limit. The sum, 66 059 680, represents the total number of females aged 18 to 25 in developed countries in 2000. Unfortunately, roughly 1% of these girls will have died since the census was taken;4 thus, the true number of so-far eligible bachelorettes is 65 399 083.
…who are beautiful: 1 487 838
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.5 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
one-half minus the product of the square root of two π and the definite integral from 0 to 2 of e to the negative one-half x squared, which equals approximately 0.02275
and so it is this number with which we multiply our current population pool.
…and intelligent: 236 053
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
one-half plus the product of the square root of two π and the definite integral from 0 to 1 of e to the negative one-half x squared, which equals approximately 84.1345%
of the population must be discounted.
…and not already committed: 118 027
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.
…and also might like me: 18 726
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 18 726 acceptable females, that we end our statistical analysis. At first glance, a datable population of 18 726 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, I would have to date for 3493 weeks before I found one of the 18 726. That's very nearly 67 years. As a North American male born in the late 1970s, my life expectancy is probably little more than 70 years, so we can safely say that I will be quite dead before I find the proverbial girl of my dreams. Come to think of it, she'll probably be dead too.
Why don't I have a girlfriend?
This is a question that practically every 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.2
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 calculations3 in case anyone wishes to conduct their own independent review. Let's now take a look at the figures.
Number of people on Earth (in 199
: 5 592 830 000 [WP98, Table A-3]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 Altairian girl as statistically significant. Now anyway, the latest halfway-reliable figures we have for Earth's population come from the United States Census Bureau's 1999 World Population Profile [WP98]. Due presumably to the time involved in compiling and processing census statistics, said report's data is valid only as of 1998, so later on we'll be making some impromptu adjustments to bring the numbers up to date.
…who are female: 2 941 118 000 [WP98, Table A-7]
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 "developed" countries: 605 601 000 [WP98, Table A-7]
We now further restrict the geographical area of interest to so-called "first-world countries". 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 North America, Europe, and Australia, so it is to these types of regions that the numbers have been narrowed.
…currently (in 2000) aged 18 to 25: 65 399 083 [WP98, Tables A-3 & A-7]
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 two years old, and second, the "population by age" tables in [WP98] are not separated into individual ages but are instead quantized into "15–19" (of whom there are 39 560 000) and "20–44" (population 215 073 000). Women aged 15 to 19 in 1998 will be aged 17 to 21 in 2000; in this group, I'm interested in dating those 18 or older, so, assuming the "15–19" girls' ages are uniformly distributed, we have
39 560 000 × ((|21 − 18| + 1) / (|19 − 15| + 1)) = 31 648 000.
Similarly, of 1998's "20–44" category, there are now
215 073 000 × ((|25 − 22| + 1) / (|44 − 20| + 1)) = 34 411 680
females within my chosen age limit. The sum, 66 059 680, represents the total number of females aged 18 to 25 in developed countries in 2000. Unfortunately, roughly 1% of these girls will have died since the census was taken;4 thus, the true number of so-far eligible bachelorettes is 65 399 083.
…who are beautiful: 1 487 838
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.5 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
one-half minus the product of the square root of two π and the definite integral from 0 to 2 of e to the negative one-half x squared, which equals approximately 0.02275
and so it is this number with which we multiply our current population pool.
…and intelligent: 236 053
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
one-half plus the product of the square root of two π and the definite integral from 0 to 1 of e to the negative one-half x squared, which equals approximately 84.1345%
of the population must be discounted.
…and not already committed: 118 027
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.
…and also might like me: 18 726
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 18 726 acceptable females, that we end our statistical analysis. At first glance, a datable population of 18 726 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, I would have to date for 3493 weeks before I found one of the 18 726. That's very nearly 67 years. As a North American male born in the late 1970s, my life expectancy is probably little more than 70 years, so we can safely say that I will be quite dead before I find the proverbial girl of my dreams. Come to think of it, she'll probably be dead too.
02-25-2007, 07:24 PM
#3
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Originally Posted by duck_dodgers_24_5
too much to read... whats the gist of it say?
02-26-2007, 04:13 PM
#11
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For the longest time i was wondering why girls "didn't like me" lol at a party i was talking to some of my freinds that are girls and they said its wasn't that they didn't like me, it's that I come across as being intimidating lmao!
02-26-2007, 04:33 PM
#12
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Re: Why I Will Never Have a Girlfriend
Originally Posted by trust
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.
finding a girl between 18-21 is easy
Without knowing your definition of beautiful, I imagine this is your main problem.
As we all have at some point in our lifes, we've tried to determine what our level of attractiveness is, and use that when guaging who we can "get".
Most people want those three things, but almost always start with "looks", because you're not going to know their inner beauty or intelligence until later down the road.
The perfect person for you should equal to "100", and because of your petty wants, lets say looks equals 33 parts of that equation, personality 33 and intelligence is 34.
But what if you found someone 20 looks, 40 personality and 40 intelligence, are you going to be able to get over looks? I can tell you, being with someone who you can't tell them their beautiful sucks, but it can work. If you're going to be embarassed about having a not-as-attractive as you'd like girlfriend, whether in front of your friends, or relatives, then Looks is more attractive to you then you want to admit.
Some blanket advice to you, get a chubby girl and be happy with her, they'll have low self esteem, but usually are more intelligent just because they haven't been pampered by guys and their family so they've had to think a little bit more for themselves.
02-26-2007, 05:01 PM
#15
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Originally Posted by HeathenBrewing
Youre equating girls to mathmatics, which is a form of logic.
Thats your first problem right there....
Thats your first problem right there....
Girls are kinda like religion, reason and logic have to get thrown out the window, and you just have to "believe" you are getting laid.
________
Receptionist: How do you write women so well?
Melvin Udall: I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.
02-26-2007, 07:04 PM
#18
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Girls:
"the Collatz Conjecture" aka "the 3X + 1 problem".
Let f(x) be a function defined on the positive integers such that:
f(x) = x/2 if x is even
f(x) = (3*x+1)/2 if x is odd
Then the conjecture is: iterates of f(x) will eventually reach 1 for any
initial value of x. Various cash prizes have been offered for the proof
or disproof of this conjecture.
There, easy. :p
"the Collatz Conjecture" aka "the 3X + 1 problem".
Let f(x) be a function defined on the positive integers such that:
f(x) = x/2 if x is even
f(x) = (3*x+1)/2 if x is odd
Then the conjecture is: iterates of f(x) will eventually reach 1 for any
initial value of x. Various cash prizes have been offered for the proof
or disproof of this conjecture.
There, easy. :p
02-26-2007, 08:24 PM
#19
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All the talk about beauty and such is just for the eyes. We need more than just the eyes to know whats good. Let me quote a wise sage known as my former co-worker Greg.
Don't forget it.
Fat chicks f**k the best man. They got nothing to lose.
02-26-2007, 08:54 PM
#20
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im not sure how this affects your equation (although i think it may lenghtens it exponentially), but looking for the "perfect girl" right off the bat is kinda hard.
The girl im dating (2yrs next month) is pretty much the perfect girl for me...but it took me a long time to realize that.
I mean, i met her over spring break and liked her so much i broke up with my other gf (of 6 months) and started dating this new one.
Heres the moral of my story.... Who cares if someone is perfect, its all about how happy you are with one another.
The girl im dating (2yrs next month) is pretty much the perfect girl for me...but it took me a long time to realize that.
I mean, i met her over spring break and liked her so much i broke up with my other gf (of 6 months) and started dating this new one.
Heres the moral of my story.... Who cares if someone is perfect, its all about how happy you are with one another.