I apologize in advance, this post is going to be a bit geeky. I was have a fascinating conversation with a friend in L.A. this morning about an article he stumbled across where a very smart(and most likely nerdy) guy in London was pondering how the Drake Equation can be retooled to figure out one's dating market.
For those that don't know, the Drake Equation is a tentative formula that takes a guess at the number of intelligent life forms in the Milky Way based on probabilities of phenomena that spawn life in lieu of any actual evidence. It's far from perfect and while outcomes can vary radically, the underlying logic makes sense. If you have x number of stars, x of them will be the right type of stars for life, and of that x of them will have planets in the habitable zone, of those, x of those planets will have conditions right for life, and so on where "x" starts at an astronomical number but keeps getting exponentially smaller.
So tying this into women, let's say you are a 35 year old male living in Los Angeles. I won't complicate this by looking at guys who just want to hook up only, let's just focus on guys looking for something serious.
There are about 12,000,000 people in the L.A. metro area. Let's say half are women. So we are now at 6,000,000 options for our 35 year old guy to choose from. Sounds great right? But let's say his dating range for a serious girl is 25-35. Of the city's inhabitants, about 15% of them may be in that range. So now we are down to 900,000 women. Still more than enough to fill out his black book. Now of those women, 1/3rd may be married, 1/3 may have boyfriends and 1/3 are single. Assuming he's not trying to steal a girl away from another man and only focuses on single women, he's now down to 297,000 women. Now let's say he weeds out the plain Janes, fatties, girls of a race he'd never date, etc. For the sake of argument let's say that 1 out of 10 random girls in his age range he's actually attracted to enough to take seriously. Now he's down to 29,700 women. Okay, still not too bad. Now the tricky part is we have no idea how many of these single, attractive, in his age range and available women will actually feel it for him. So let's say 1 in 10 of this pool of women considers him to be her physical type. Now we're down to 2,970 women that are of the appropriate demographic he wants and where there would be mutual physical attraction. But we haven't even started talking personality and actual compatibility. Now let's say he weeds out the women on anti-depressant drugs, the attention shores, drama queens, women that don't share his passions or interest, masculine women, women he doesn't vibe with, etc. Let's assume that of this final pile, 1 in 10 of them are a great match personality-wise. Now he's down to 297 women in the ENTIRE city of 12,000,000. A match under these circumstances would be 0.0025% of the population. For anyone that considers themselves picky, finding the right woman might be a daunting task.
Now obviously these numbers are just speculative. Even a slight adjustment in the percentages at any stage of the filter can alter the final number dramatically. A guy could date women that he's not that physically into for example and find 30% of women attractive rather than 10%. If at the same time it was possible to bring his attractiveness level up so that 30% of his market found him attractive instead of 10%, that would mean a final number of 2,673.
Of course some numbers are hard to plug in, such as how many women in your city would find you attractive, and how many women in your city would have compatible personalities. If you really wanted to dig into your local city's demographics and take notes on how many women you find attractive in your city as a percentage and how many women you talk to that you find yourself compatible with you can probably make some decent estimations.
Just something to ponder!
For those that don't know, the Drake Equation is a tentative formula that takes a guess at the number of intelligent life forms in the Milky Way based on probabilities of phenomena that spawn life in lieu of any actual evidence. It's far from perfect and while outcomes can vary radically, the underlying logic makes sense. If you have x number of stars, x of them will be the right type of stars for life, and of that x of them will have planets in the habitable zone, of those, x of those planets will have conditions right for life, and so on where "x" starts at an astronomical number but keeps getting exponentially smaller.
So tying this into women, let's say you are a 35 year old male living in Los Angeles. I won't complicate this by looking at guys who just want to hook up only, let's just focus on guys looking for something serious.
There are about 12,000,000 people in the L.A. metro area. Let's say half are women. So we are now at 6,000,000 options for our 35 year old guy to choose from. Sounds great right? But let's say his dating range for a serious girl is 25-35. Of the city's inhabitants, about 15% of them may be in that range. So now we are down to 900,000 women. Still more than enough to fill out his black book. Now of those women, 1/3rd may be married, 1/3 may have boyfriends and 1/3 are single. Assuming he's not trying to steal a girl away from another man and only focuses on single women, he's now down to 297,000 women. Now let's say he weeds out the plain Janes, fatties, girls of a race he'd never date, etc. For the sake of argument let's say that 1 out of 10 random girls in his age range he's actually attracted to enough to take seriously. Now he's down to 29,700 women. Okay, still not too bad. Now the tricky part is we have no idea how many of these single, attractive, in his age range and available women will actually feel it for him. So let's say 1 in 10 of this pool of women considers him to be her physical type. Now we're down to 2,970 women that are of the appropriate demographic he wants and where there would be mutual physical attraction. But we haven't even started talking personality and actual compatibility. Now let's say he weeds out the women on anti-depressant drugs, the attention shores, drama queens, women that don't share his passions or interest, masculine women, women he doesn't vibe with, etc. Let's assume that of this final pile, 1 in 10 of them are a great match personality-wise. Now he's down to 297 women in the ENTIRE city of 12,000,000. A match under these circumstances would be 0.0025% of the population. For anyone that considers themselves picky, finding the right woman might be a daunting task.
Now obviously these numbers are just speculative. Even a slight adjustment in the percentages at any stage of the filter can alter the final number dramatically. A guy could date women that he's not that physically into for example and find 30% of women attractive rather than 10%. If at the same time it was possible to bring his attractiveness level up so that 30% of his market found him attractive instead of 10%, that would mean a final number of 2,673.
Of course some numbers are hard to plug in, such as how many women in your city would find you attractive, and how many women in your city would have compatible personalities. If you really wanted to dig into your local city's demographics and take notes on how many women you find attractive in your city as a percentage and how many women you talk to that you find yourself compatible with you can probably make some decent estimations.
Just something to ponder!