The Math of Love

The odds of finding your soul mate are actually much higher than you think – probably higher than the odds of running into a truck in Bangalore traffic!

The odds of finding your soul mate can apparently be mathematically computed – using Fermi’s paradox and the Drake Equation.  Finally all those hours of statistics and mathematics classes will be put to good use! 

Fermi couldn’t understand where all the extra-terrestrials were – with so many billions of stars and planets, they had to be somewhere! Kind of echoes the human sentiment towards finding ‘the one’ – with 7 billion people on the planet – he/ she had to be somewhere!  Fermi’s paradox was used by Drake in an equation to compute the odds of finding extra-terrestrials. This equation is then translated to love – quite apt I think given that men are from Mars and women are from Venus!

As per the equation, the odds of finding love if you’re a 24 year old in New York are 871. As Desi Brigit Jones isn’t going anytime soon to New York, I figured I might as well apply this to Bangalore.

Anyway, here goes – (Believe, me if there is any motivation to learn math – this is it!):

N (soul mates) = N*F1*F2*F3*F4*F5*F6*F7*F8 where

N = Total Population in Bangalore (= 9.6 million as per the 2011 census)

F1 = Target population = 0.5 (Desi Brigit Jones is only looking at men – for now!)

F2 = No. of folks who are single = 0.4 (As adultery is a catholic mortal sin - no married men!)

F3 = Fraction of people I might meet= 0.2 (likely to be higher if you’re the gregarious type)

F4 = Folks in the target age range = between the early 40’s and late 40’s = 0.2

F5 = Folks who speak English = 0.8 (why do you think all those US jobs got ‘bangalored’?)

F6 = % of people I’d find attractive = 0.05 (Desi Brigit Jones is very picky!)

F7 = % of people who’d find me attractive = 0.05 (I realize, given my track record, that I probably come across to most men as a ‘ball busting’ feminist)

F8 = % of people who’d share my taste in the performing arts & music = 0.3 (fusion music, dance etc.)

Crunch the numbers and there are around 46 potential soul mates in Bangalore for me. Ouch only 46?! Well given that I’m quickly going through the alphabet, one letter at a time, falling in and out of love with A, J, Mr. E, P and V, I guess I should find ‘the one’ pretty soon – hopefully on this planet. Though I suspect the odds of finding extra-terrestrials are much higher!