This one is for reader Fernando. An oldie but a good one making the rounds again. Warwick University’s Peter Backus applies the Drake equation to discover why, exactly, he can’t find a girlfriend:
So, what this means is that there are 10,510 people in the UK that satisfy these most basic criteria for being my girlfriend. That is 0.00017% of the UK and 0.0014% of Londoners, which doesn’t seem so bad. On a given night in London, there is greater than a 1 in 1000 chance that I will meet an attractive woman between the ages of 24 and 34 with a university degree. Of course this does not take into account the fraction of these women that will find me attractive (depressingly low), the fraction of these women who will be single (falling with age) and, perhaps most importantly, the fraction of these women who I will get along with. ..
Of course this isn’t airtight science but its fun and there are some great comments. Check out the This American life audio, I can’t get enough of Ira Glass.
Favorite comment: “I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that because he is the type of guy to formulate why he doesn’t have a girlfriend is the reason why he doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
From BoingBoing.
