Why don't I have a girlfriend?
Someone would 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 22 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 calculations 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 2011) : 6 928 198 253
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.
…who are female: 3 361 154 752
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.
…from countries I have contacts (SL, IND, PAK, BANG, AUS, SA & UK) : 798 185 821
We now further restrict the geographical area of interest. My chances of meeting a babe from China or a goddess from Ghana, either in person or on the Internet, are understandably low. I will most likely spend nearly my entire life living and working in sub continent & most of my online friends are from Cricket playing nations.
- SL : 10 837 497
- IND : 565 192 792
- PAK : 84 387 092
- BANG : 71 813 003
- AUS : 10 858 195
- SA : 24 608 620
- UK : 30 488 622
…currently (in 2011) aged 18 to 24: 69 967 180
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. Because, the "population by age" tables are not separated into individual ages but are instead quantized into "15–64" (of whom there are 504 813 705). In this group, I'm interested in dating those 18 - 24. So, assuming the "15–64" females' ages are uniformly distributed, we have;
females within my chosen age limit, 70 673 918.7, represents the total number of females aged 18 to 24 in above countries in 2011. Unfortunately, roughly 1% of these girls will have died since the census was taken; thus, the true number of so-far eligible bachelorettes is 69 967 179.51
…who are beautiful: 1 591 753
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. 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
and so it is this number with which we multiply our current population pool.
…and intelligent: 252 540
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
of the population must be discounted.
…and not already committed: 126 270
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: 20 033
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 20 033 acceptable females, that we end our statistical analysis. At first glance, a datable population of 20 033 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 20 033. That's very nearly 67 years. As a Sri Lankan male, my life expectancy is probably little more than 70 years (73.22 years to be precise), 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.
Note :- This was originally written by Tristan Miller in 2000. I just made few changes for apply this theory to me.
