Why I Will Never Have A Girlfriend
Tristan Miller
German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence1
20 December 1999
Why don't I have a girlfriend?
This is a question that practically every male has asked himself at
one point or another in his life. Unfortunately, there is rarely a
hard and fast answer to the query. Many men try to reason their way
through the dilemma nonetheless, often reaching a series of
ridiculous explanations, each more self-deprecating than the last:
"Is it because I'm too shy, and not aggressive enough? Is it my
opening lines? Am I a boring person? Am I too fat or too thin? Or
am I simply ugly and completely unattractive to women?" When all
other plausible explanations have been discounted, most fall back
on the time-honoured conclusion that "there must be Something
Wrong with me" before resigning themselves to lives of perpetual
chastity.2
Not the author, though. I, for one, refuse to spend my life
brooding over my lack of luck with women. While I'll be the first
to admit that my chances of ever entering into a meaningful
relationship with someone special are practically non-existent, I
staunchly refuse to admit that it has anything to do with some
inherent problem with me. Instead, I am convinced that the
situation can be readily explained in purely scientific terms,
using nothing more than demographics and some elementary
statistical calculus.
Lest anyone 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 21 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 calculations3 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 199
: 5 592 830 000 [WP98, Table A-3]
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. Now anyway, the latest halfway-reliable
figures we have for Earth's population come from the United States
Census Bureau's 1999 World Population Profile [WP98]. Due
presumably to the time involved in compiling and processing census
statistics, said report's data is valid only as of 1998, so later
on we'll be making some impromptu adjustments to bring the numbers
up to date.
who are female: 2 941 118 000 [WP98, Table A-7]
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.
in "developed" countries: 605 601 000 [WP98, Table A-7]
We now further restrict the geographical area of interest to
so-called "first-world countries". My reasons for doing so are not
motivated out of contempt for those who are economically
disadvantaged, but rather by simple probability. My chances of
meeting a babe from Bhutan or a goddess from Ghana, either in
person or on the Internet, are understandably low. In fact, I will
most likely spend nearly my entire life living and working in North
America, Europe, and Australia, so it is to these types of regions
that the numbers have been narrowed.
currently (in 2000) aged 18 to 25: 65 399 083 [WP98, Tables A-3
& A-7]
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, for two
reasons: first, the census data is nearly two years old, and
second, the "population by age" tables in [WP98] are not separated
into individual ages but are instead quantized into "1519" (of
whom there are 39 560 000) and "2044" (population 215 073 000).
Women aged 15 to 19 in 1998 will be aged 17 to 21 in 2000; in this
group, I'm interested in dating those 18 or older, so, assuming the
"1519" girls' ages are uniformly distributed, we have
Similarly, of 1998's "2044" category, there are now
females within my chosen age limit. The sum, 66 059 680, represents
the total number of females aged 18 to 25 in developed countries in
2000. Unfortunately, roughly 1% of these girls will have died since
the census was taken;4 thus, the true number of so-far eligible
bachelorettes is 65 399 083.
who are beautiful: 1 487 838
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.5 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: 236 053
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: 118 027
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: 18 726
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 18 726 acceptable females, that we end our
statistical analysis. At first glance, a datable population of 18
726 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 18 726. That's very nearly 67 years. As a North American
male born in the late 1970s, my life expectancy is probably little
more than 70 years, 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.
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So there you have it, my friends finally, a cogent, scientific,
non-self-deprecating argument for why I will never have a
girlfriend. That said, if you happen to be a girl deluded enough to
think that you and I have a chance together, feel free to drop me a
line, but I warn you, you face odds of 157 060 to 1. I wouldn't
bother if I were you.