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Here is the recipe for finding optimal love:

Step 1: Estimate how many people you could date in your life, n.

Step 2: Calculate the square root of that number, √n.

Step 3: Date and reject the first √n people; the best of them will set your benchmark.

Step 4: Continue dating people and settle down with the first person to exceed the benchmark set by the initial √n dates.

This may all sound very impersonal as a way to find a partner, but math has been used to locate love. When Kepler (of the Kepler conjecture) lost his first wife to cholera, he decided to make finding his next wife a mathematical process. In a letter written in 1613 he described how he planned to dedicate two years of his life to interviewing and ranking 11 possible candidates and then making a calculated choice. We don’t know what his “wife appropriateness function” to rank them was, but we do know that he felt the constraints of the secretary problem. He tried to go back and propose to the fourth person he interviewed, but she had already moved on, and refused him. He eventually ended up happily married to candidate five of eleven. Now that’s some rigorous loving.

drealm wrote:Is this a good idea?