A Numerate Life by John Allen Paulos

Author:John Allen Paulos
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633881198
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (Publisher Services)
Published: 2015-10-18T16:00:00+00:00

CHOOSING A SPOUSE, MEETING MY WIFE, SHEILA

Logical seduction aside, a number of other ideas from game theory, probability, and various mathematical disciplines tangentially are relevant to the issue of choosing a partner. Imagine, for example, you're in the market for a spouse (market and spouse—a decidedly unpleasant juxtaposition of terms), and you can reasonably expect to meet N potential suitors—candidates for marriage—during your life. There will be different values of N for different people. A well-known exercise in probability asks us to assume that the candidates can be numerically ranked from worst to best (according to your tastes) and that at any point, as you date them sequentially, you can stop your search, forego meeting the rest of the total estimated N candidates you're likely to meet, and marry the one you're dating. Or, of course, you can reject him or her and continue on your quest, giving up the possibility of reconsidering that person at a later time.

Given these assumptions, it can be shown that you will maximize your chances of choosing your heartthrob, the candidate who is best for you, if you reject the first 37 percent of the N candidates you're likely to meet and then marry the next one who is better for you than all previous candidates. Using this strategy your chances of ending up with your heartthrob is also about 37 percent. (Incidentally, 37 percent happens to be approximately 1/e, where e, once again, is the base of the natural logarithm.)1

This approach is not nearly as poetic but is a bit more mathematical than Elizabeth Barrett Browning's “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Although quite simplistic in its assumptions, the “Let me count the suitors” approach does offer some wise counsel: don't opt for the first few possibilities, but don't wait too long either.

Happily, this is not the way my wife, Sheila, and I met. We were both graduate students at the University of Wisconsin and had seen each other a couple of times on campus. She was from New York, I from Milwaukee, and we were superficially quite different. Thinking I looked like the son of her building superintendent whom she disliked, she hurried away when she saw me. A bit later we were both attending an anti–Vietnam War rally near the campus that had turned into something more ominous. The police arrived and began tear-gassing people in what seemed an indiscriminate manner. The resulting chaos found Sheila and me next to each other with a tear gas canister at our feet. We both ran toward a building where we headed for the water fountain. We got there simultaneously, and I held the faucet open for her to rinse her eyes. After I did so as well, we laughed with relief and began talking, not about the rally but about ourselves. She had just returned from working on an Israeli kibbutz and, as mentioned, I had just returned from Kenya with the Peace Corps where I had gone to avoid the draft.

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