Still without disagreeing with the overall conclusion...
... yes, if a person insists it is mandatory that all partners have one specific trait (eg, "Discworld fan") then that will significantly narrow the possible candidates. In practice most people have several interests/passions/beliefs and desire partners that share some subset of those. So if, eg, Discworld fandom is too small, some combination of those other interests/passions might work. I was trying to keep my illustration of (a) shared interest leading to common attraction and (b) improved search strategy somewhat simple.
As I said, I don't disagree with the main conclusion. But the "mathematical proof" combined with somewhat mathematically inappropriate assumptions (eg, independence of factors, random search) did remind me of a net-famous post of a mathematical proof of "Why I will Never Have a Girlfriend" (which I'm surprised to discover was from 1999; it seemed more recent).
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Re: Statistics
Date: 2014-09-10 08:32 pm (UTC)... yes, if a person insists it is mandatory that all partners have one specific trait (eg, "Discworld fan") then that will significantly narrow the possible candidates. In practice most people have several interests/passions/beliefs and desire partners that share some subset of those. So if, eg, Discworld fandom is too small, some combination of those other interests/passions might work. I was trying to keep my illustration of (a) shared interest leading to common attraction and (b) improved search strategy somewhat simple.
As I said, I don't disagree with the main conclusion. But the "mathematical proof" combined with somewhat mathematically inappropriate assumptions (eg, independence of factors, random search) did remind me of a net-famous post of a mathematical proof of "Why I will Never Have a Girlfriend" (which I'm surprised to discover was from 1999; it seemed more recent).
Ewen