Bonus: The Mathematical Process to Pick the Best

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Alright, let’s imagine you now want to find a great mate.

And be both efficient and quick.

Let’s see how to go about it rationally and scientifically.

Mathematical Approach
The “mathematically correct” way might seem to take each feature, multiply it by its
importance, add up the results and then compare all the available options.

But that’s not necessary.

You don’t need any complex approach, and very good sexual choice can result from very
simple and fast decision rules.

Simplified Formula: “Take the Best”

First, rank the top features that you want in a mate.

Gigerenzer and colleagues found that you can reach extremely good decisions by ranking
only the features you find most important, and then compare the prospects on each
feature from the most important to the least important until you find a feature where one
prospect is clearly superior.

For example, if you think that beauty and intelligence are the two most important
features, then you can just ask yourself “is one significantly more attractive than the
other?”
If yes, pick that one.
If not, ask the same for intelligence: “is one significantly more intelligent than the other?”.
If yes, pick that one.

This rule, called “Take the Best”, reaches decisions almost as good as the most
sophisticated rules.

Winnowing the Field: Try a Dozen, Then Pick the Next Best
Alright, the “Take the Best” rule is great when you have already narrowed down the field
to a few top candidates.

But what do you do when you are dating sequentially and want to pick the best candidate
without dating all the available options -which would be impossible in any city, anyway-?

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In math these problems refer to a class called “optimal stopping problems”.

The 37% rule is a popular rule to deal with stopping problems. It says you “only” to
estimate the size of the eligible population and then 37% of those.
Of course, as you can see, that might work well for job openings but it still doesn’t work
for singles in big dating markets.

Well, Todd and Miller came up with the “Try a Dozen” rule which performs as well as the
37% rule under most conditions.
It’s very simple: date a dozen possible mates, remember the best of them, and then pick
the very next prospect who is even more attractive.
No need to estimate the total size of eligible mates and no need to date 37% of them.

This is taken and elaborated from:

“The Mating Mind”, Geoffrey Miller (2000)

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