Wha-Whaaaaaa
This is the kind of affirmation one ought to keep in mind when they engage in a string of one night stands. For serious, get laid now; get married later.
There’s an episode of This American Life called ‘Somewhere Out There’ that has stuck with me since it aired last year, particularly the opening segment. In it, a Harvard physicist takes a scientific look at the notion of soul mates—more specifically, the idea that there is one just one person out there for each of us. He based his study on something called the Drake Equation which examines the number of planets in the universe and how many of these could potentially hold intelligent life.
Because he was single at the time, he wanted to apply that equation to his life and replaced intelligent life with girlfriends. Of course nothing is exact—we’re dealing with rough numbers, estimations and general deductions. He started with the raw number of people living in his town of Boston; about 600,000. He figured he could cut that down to 300,000 given the 50/50 male to female ratio. Then he set up some basics: age range (between 20 and 40; down to 35% of 300,000) and college graduates (apparently only 25% of adults are college graduates). Those “basics” left him with 25,000, down from 600,000. He estimated half of these to be single. Now he had to deal with the real issue: how many of these would he find attractive? He guessed, in my opinion, a high percentage: 1 out of 5. Even with that generous assumption, his number was cut to 2,500.
Without factoring any personal details—sense of humor, interests, goals, religion, etc—this straight male in a a major city was left with a relatively low number of potential suitors. So like I said it stuck with me and it made me wonder what my number would be as a gay female in a “major” city.
Like Boston, Portland has a population of about 600,000. Cut that in half for the number of females to 300,000. Now even though I am more than certain that the “1 out of 10” statistic is based on male sexuality, I will use it as my next cut. 30,000. I’ll use his +10 age range but not -10 because that illegal and gross, so I’ll say I’m left with 17 percent of 30,000—5,100. I won’t say they have to be college grads because whatever, but I would like them not to be an idiot so let’s say 75 percent of those are not idiots. Around 3,800. Cut that in half for those who are single and I’ve got 1,400. I’ll use his VERY GENEROUS 1 out of 5 attraction scale and I now have 280. This is before we get into anything personal. Half that for crazies. Half that for sense of humor. Half that for something they left out: their feelings toward you. Half that for everything else.
17.
Whew, imagine if I was being honest with my estimations.
