P(couplehood)

I was almost flunked sideway out of my seat when I first started writing this cos the bus driver drove worse than me. And that's not funny. So bear with this lengthy, "academic" and pictureless one to make my near sacrifice worth it :p

Was chatting about my single unattached status. Friend was right, that I'm not actively "patrolling". No time, no energy, and how do you keep a lookout? Especially when I'm always out with the same kakis.. Um, NOT them!

So how? Rely on friends? Sito tried, twice. Kel gave an intro of someone I wasn't interested to meet. And the other day over dinner at the boss's place, they turned to me suddenly and asked about SF's (matchmaking) project on me - not working too!

Really, I'm beginning to think it's all about luck. I mean, what's the chance of finding someone you like and who likes you too?

This is where, for once, I would like to revisit my, ahem, profession..

It's a series of events: two persons must first meet, somehow develop good feelings for each other, and at least one party must follow up, right? Assumed so, we have:

P(couplehood)
= P(A meets B, and they like each other, and either A or B or both f/u)

Now let's make a couple of assumptions here:
1) All are independent events cos my wee brain can't deal with too many conditional probabilities!
2) Probability of meeting someone is 3/7; I take it that people socialise about half the time, mostly during weekends.
3) Probability of liking someone is 1/3, since we could like or dislike someone or have neutral feelings. I make it even so as to account for varied expectations of people.. Um, guesswork, really :p
4) Probability of f/u is 1/2; similar reasoning as (3).

* At one point while composing this, I had a mathematical block and sent a desperate SOS to Kel: what is P(X∩Y)?? If anyone knows, it's Kel. Why? Just the other day, he suddenly told me he managed to derive the coefficient of restitution. We're indeed a bunch of geeks *.*

So, by these assumptions,
P(couplehood)
=P(A meets B)P(they like each other)P(either A or B or both f/u)
=(3/7)(3/7)(1/3)(1/3)(1-(1/2)(1/2))
=3/196 = 1.53%

Kao! I thought it would be low but this is really low!

Ok, let's replace assumption #2: either A and B have met or people meet people everyday ie P(A meets B) = 1!

So,
P(couplehood)
=P(they like each other)P(either A or B or both f/u)
=(1/3)(1/3)(1-(1/2)(1/2))
=1/12 = 8.3%

Still low but less scary. I gather that meeting more people is the main hurdle ie the higher P(A meets B) or P (A meets BCDEF) is, the higher P(couplehood) will be!

Oh btw, that's only P(couplehood); I'm not even calculating the odds of getting married yet, you know, getting through arguments, long distance etc..

P(marriage)
= P(getting through every piece of shit conditional on couplehood)
= P(getting through every POS during couplehood)/P(couplehood)

We know P(couplehood) is small. So if P(getting through every POS during couplehood) is not too much smaller than P(couplehood), I say we've got a match! :)

And, P(getting through every POS during couplehood) = ..?

Gaaar! Had enough maths for the rest of 2006 at this point! :p

Kao, 走火入魔-ing in my work already..