How to Use Math to Choose a Spouse

By John Farrier in Science & Tech on Sep 11, 2009 at 2:36 pm

Chris Matyszczyk explains that the laws of probability indicate when you should settle for one prospective mate, and when you should keep on looking. There’s a point of diminishing returns in a succession of relationships when you should marry before your prospects start to get worse:

So for a long time, mathematicians believed that, given 100 choices (each of which has to be chosen or discarded after the interview) you should discard the first 50 and then choose the next best one. (The assumption also is that if you don’t choose the first 99, you have to choose number 100, which, again, seems rather realistic to me. I know so many people who have chosen the last resort out of perceived necessity rather than, say, happiness.)

The “Discard 50 then Choose the Next Best” method apparently gives you a 25 percent chance of choosing the best candidate.

However, then along came John Gilbert and Frederick Mosteller of Harvard University. I do not believe they were married. However, they came upon the idea that the magic number is, in fact, 37. Yes, you should stop after 37 candidates and choose the next best one. This number was apparently derived by taking the number 100 and dividing by e, the base of the natural logarithms (around 2.72). And it apparently increases your chances of the best choice to 37 percent.

Link via The Corner

Image: U.S. Department of Energy


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  1. Skipweasel
    Sep 11th, 2009 at 3:09 pm

    Yeah, this sort of presupposes that you have that many candidates from which to choose.

  2. Alex
    Sep 11th, 2009 at 3:35 pm

    If get Matyszczyk to say his name backwards, he’ll return to the his home dimension.

  3. Anthony C
    Sep 11th, 2009 at 3:38 pm

    @Skipweasel:
    I think the idea is that if you estimate you will have n options in your lifetime, you should reject the first n/e options, then choose the best one after that.

    Estimating n is the hard part.

  4. Lady Helena Handbasket
    Sep 11th, 2009 at 3:47 pm

    This algorithm sounds more suitable for choosing a car than choosing a partner. In the case of a partner, some of the 100 candidates will reject YOU.

  5. bendistraw
    Sep 11th, 2009 at 3:51 pm

    I wonder if it works over time. After having been with a few people can I assume (or pretend) that I rejected them and I should include that number of people in my math up to 37?

  6. BartC3
    Sep 11th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    or if you are someone who thinks using math to find a spouse is a good idea= you will die alone.

  7. Puzzled Monkey
    Sep 11th, 2009 at 4:43 pm

    How to beat the 37% rule:

    http://www-abc.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/users/ptodd/publications/todd97/todd 97a.htm

    Testing 9 to 12 candidates and then taking the next better one gets you into the top 75 to 90% of the pool, whether the pool is 100 or 1000.

  8. Miss Cellania
    Sep 11th, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    Young people need a few extra tries, because you have to date a few people before you even realize what qualities are really important to you. The mating game is a learning experience, too.

  9. John Farrier
    Sep 11th, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    Amen, Miss C. I wanted to marry my first girlfriend. What a disaster it would have been had I succeeded.

  10. secret asian man
    Sep 11th, 2009 at 7:41 pm

    “What the hell is that anyway, “something like thirty-six?” Does that include me?”

    “Um. Thirty-seven.”

    “I’m THIRTY SEVEN?”

  11. cesky
    Sep 11th, 2009 at 7:47 pm

    @Alex : You really don’t like Slovaks huh? That name is pronounced “Ma-Tee-Zee-Shik.” I bet you have some boring last name like Phillips.

    Anyway… Interesting article, good to know. Now I have to count up the number over crushes/lovers I’ve had and see if I’m close… I think I’m almost there.

  12. Christophe
    Sep 11th, 2009 at 11:58 pm

    Well 37 dates is less expensive than 50. So the return on investment ratio looks already better ;)

  13. DaveL
    Sep 12th, 2009 at 1:53 am

    I would take half the pile of applicants and immediately discard them as I don’t want to mate with those who have bad luck.

  14. Random Drive-By Commenter
    Sep 12th, 2009 at 3:22 am

    @ Puzzled Monkey

    I believe what you’re seeing tested empirically in figures 2 and 5 of that paper is this …
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem#Cardinal_payoff_variant

    For that problem, the optimal skip pool, given N candidates, is sqrt(N):
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmp.2005.11.003

    So for N=100, it’s 10, and for N=1000, it’s ~32.

  15. Foreigner1
    Sep 12th, 2009 at 5:19 am

    30 SEVEN???
    Okay- so should I now acutely divorce my wife that I ‘ve been with harmoniously for the past 20 years to date some 34 ladies more…?

  16. FishBottleT
    Sep 12th, 2009 at 11:54 am

    I think that trying to put a number figure on how many people you should turn down before looking for a mate is crazy. Now yes I do agree that you must have a number of relationships in order to find out what makes you happy but to think that at a certain number you should change your outlook and coose one is pretty stupid in my eyes.

  17. Icancount
    Sep 14th, 2009 at 1:06 pm

    It’s NOT the number you date or whom you reject: It’s the *Probability* of success or compatibility or whatever. Gather 100 candidates of suitable age and attainment, mix them up, count them off and carry #37 to the haystack.

    Even so, as stated, you’re only a little better than 1-in-3 by this method, a bit worse than ‘real-world,’ where the marriage breakup rate is ~ 1-in-2


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