This is my latest obby and I can’t tell you how excited I am about it. I organized a panel, code name “Black Sheep of MIT”, but really the title is “Career Transitions: From Math & Science to Poker & Politics”, where four MIT alums will be sharing their stories of how they ended up pursuing some rather non-traditional careers. Professional poker player Andy Bloch will be on the panel!!! It’s happening this Thursday, March 15 at 6pm. For more information, check out the event description here. I will write more about it afterwards.

The reason I haven’t written for a while is partly due to my busy schedule, but mostly because I’m not sure how much I want to say. Some of the things I’m starting right now involve collaborators and potential clients down the line. I’m not sure how I feel about blabbing on the Internet and leaving a permanent record. Here is one of the worst-case scenarios I picture: a client stumbles upon the blog, reads this post and exclaims “What? You mean to tell me that you have no clue about investing as of two month ago?” Or something horrid like that. It’s no fun writing with unease and too much self-censorship. So that’s why I haven’t been writing. I’m sure some experienced bloggers out there have thought about this and figured it all out. If you have any thoughts on this one, please do share.

So about investing, I’ve been talking to a friend of mine who is a money manager. Right now, I’m writing some code in attempt to help him automate some aspects of his trading. I’ve spend most of the last month learning about investing. The problem of stock prediction is a pretty complicated one, but I think using computational methods to aide human decision making seems like a good area to get started on. I’m currently working on ways to filter stocks down to a smaller pool of more promising ones. Then, handing the list off to my friend to do what he does best.

The other project I’m starting to work on involves marketing and event planning for a series of seminars a friend of mine will be teaching. It wasn’t long ago when I would meet a marketing person at a party, my eyes would glaze over and I would suddenly find the need to go refill my drink. These days, I would practically corner them and ask them so many questions that they think I’m either A) hitting on them, or B) involved in industrial espionage.

Besides investing and event planning, there is one more active project. I’m looking into starting a design firm that specializes in multi-media, technology driven art. I guess art has been one of my most lasting interests growing up. Back in twelfth grade, I had seriously considered going to art school. Since then, I’ve done a few paintings and craft projects. The interest was always there but I have no illusions about trying to make it as an artist. I think putting a team together designing and marketing technological art would give me just the right amount of involvement with art while leveraging my technical training and contacts. Now, this one is still very much in the concept phase. Right now, I’m mostly spending my time doing research online. I’m hoping to get some conversations started with area curators and corporate art consultants in the next few month.

That’s all for now. I hope I’m making sense OK. I’m home with a cold and feeling a little off. Well, time for some hot water and TV. And oh, I will probably write somewhat sporadically from now on until I figure out some of the questions I mentioned in the beginning.

“It was an evening of wine and cheese at the Melee Vineyards in the Nippy Valley…”

Last Saturday, I went to a murder mystery party in celebration of a friend’s birthday. For those of you who don’t know what that is, the name pretty much says it all, it’s a party where the participants get to role-play a murder mystery. The mystery is usually pre-scripted. Depending on acting aptitude and the amount of alcohol consumed, the participants can go anywhere from reading their scripts word-for-word to all out theatrics complete with costumes and props.

The party I went to fell somewhere in the middle. By the time we got things started, half of us were already drunk. In the end, it was revealed that I was the murderess (I swear I’m innocent). But that’s not the reason I brought this up. The reason I’m bringing it up now is that it is a perfect illustration of the spirit behind obbies. So much so that I’m giving Jack Pachuta, creator of the murder mystery game we played, the Obbyist of the Month Award. Here is why.

Writing is a creative outlet that many people enjoy. Writing a murder mystery can be fun, but writing the scripts for a murder mystery party and hosting the event takes it to the next level (you should see the wine labels that came with the game). It turns a largely solitary creative process into a fun and celebratory event that brings people together. That is the essence of obbies.

Some lucky people are able to make a living doing their hobbies. They design jewelry, they write novels, they make computer games. The hard truth is that for every one of them who succeeds, there are probably tens or hundreds that remain hobbyists. Converting a hobby into a livelihood is already a tough problem. Unfortunately, what I have in mind poses some additional difficulties. First of all, I don’t want to make a living doing just one hobby. I want to be doing whatever hobby that strikes my fancy. Since I don’t know what I will fancy, say two weeks from now, how can I plan to make money with it?

The second difficulty is that my fancies don’t last very long: no longer than 4 months at a time (I call these short-lived hobbies obbies). In this day and age, people get paid for the expertise they develop in their chosen fields. Four months is not a long time to develop any kind of expertise let alone produce something, convince someone to pay for it, and get paid enough to make a living. But after much soul searching, I decided that nevertheless these are my terms.

Here is what I envision: I get into some kind of new obby like basket weaving. Then, I think about how I can make money doing it. I sell the baskets I make, I teach others how to make baskets, I consult for a basket weaving company, I write about basket weaving, I make an informative website on basket weaving and sell ad space on it…

It sure would be nice to have a comprehensive list of ways to make money. That way, every time I get into a new obby, I can refer to my big list and quickly come up with an effective way to generate income. This is my first step. Effectively, I will develop an infrastructure for monetizing obbies so that the turn around time from idea conception to income generation is minimized. Whether I can get the process down to under 4 months remains to be seen.

I did a quick brainstorm. Here is a starting point of ways to make money.

• Make and sell things
• Join an online affiliate program
• Make a high-traffic webpage and sell ads on it
• Develop material/service on a website and sell subscriptions
• Consult
• Teach (tutor, teach adult education classes, conduct seminars/workshops)
• Write and sell articles

Over the next three months, I will be adding to the list and fleshing it out. There are a lot of questions that needs to be answered for each of these models. For example:

• What’s the up front investment in terms of time and money?
• How soon can I turn a profit with this model?
• How much can I expect to make? (What’s my hourly rate?)
• How re-usable will my work be? (e.g. If I invest time and energy developing a website, can I develop similar ones quickly and make more money?)
• Will the steps involved in setting it up be fun, interesting, and challenging for me personally?

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please let me know.

Life is so hard I need a vacation . I’m gone for the next two weeks. When I come back, I’ll dive into the problem of how to make a living doing obbies. Later!

Hate the morning commute? I know what you mean! Every morning, I drag myself out of bed and take a LONG twenty minute walk to the Yoga studio. It sucks! I sure wish it were closer. And that’s not even half of it. The toughest part of my day comes after lunch. I usually make myself a big stir-fry and by the time I’m done with it, I’d really like to take a nap. But do I let myself? Of course not! Instead, I walk down to the Diesel cafe and bear down for a few hours on my work. Sometimes, I don’t come home till I finish reading an entire book. That’s how dedicated I am. By the way, the third Harry Potter book sucked. What’s happpened though is that I’ve come to associate Diesel with work. I don’t want to ruin a good place like that. I need to branch out and find other places to camp out.

I checked out a number of places, mostly in the Somerville/Cambridge area. I judge them according to two criteria:

1) level of natural light (the more the better)
2) layout (I like a place that feels open)

Here is what I found, starting with good old Diesel:

Cafes:

• Diesel Cafe (257 Elm Street, Somerville) — Huge place with a warehouse-like design, situated in the heart of Davis Square, this place is well populated with laptops. The small seating area near the entrance has a good amount of light. They do have comfortable booths and sofas in the back. It’s a great place to go camp out for hours at a time. They are open till 1am on weekdays and 2am on weekends. One downside is that the bathrooms are really stinky, likely due to the high traffic volume.
• True Grounds (717 Broadway, Somerville) — Small and cozy with a decent amount of light, this place has a homey feel to it. I hear they have really good coffee and espresso (I wouldn’t know since I’m a tea drinker). The free wireless is a big plus.
• O’Naturals (187 Elm St, Somerville) — As the name suggests, it serves organic, healthy, fast food. The place has free wireless but they turn it off during lunch time. The downside is that they close at 4pm.
• Soleil Cafe (1153 Broadway, Somerville) — Small, sunny and pleasant. They also close at 4pm. If you ever order food here, the service is very slow.
• Tower Cafe in the Tufts Tisch Library (35 Professors Row, Medford) — Very small, only a few tables. They do have more couches and chairs you can sit and hang out or read a book.
• Sherman Cafe (257 Washington st, Somerville) — Pleasant and relaxed, a good place to work. It has free wireless.
• Algiers Cafe (40 Brattle St, Cambridge) — Exotic, beautiful and atmospheric, I can’t believe that I’ve never set foot in this place until recently. It’s not as bright as I would like but the atmosphere of this place is so awesome that I’d be willing to overlook it. Check out the upstairs, they even have a little roof patio for nice weather. It’s a great place to take your date to post dinner/movie, hangout with friends, or immerse yourself in a novel. Laptops feel out of place here. I believe they do serve alcohol. And oh, the service is really slow so you may want to ask for your check when you order or go up to the counter to pay when you are ready to leave.
• Dado Tea (50 church st, Harvard Sq & 955 Mass Ave, Cambridge) — They have two locations. The one at Harvard Square has a slightly better layout and feel. Very nice place to work.
• Peet’s Coffee & Tea (Harvard Square location: 100 Mount Auburn St, Cambridge; Boston location: 176 Federal St; Brookline location: 285 Harvard St) — The one at Harvard Square is nice but very crowded. I haven’t been to the Boston location.
• Espresso Royale Cafe (44 Gainsborough St & 286 Newbury St, Boston) — The location at Gainsborough St (near Symphony Hall) has an open layout and pleasant feel. The one on Newbury St. is smaller and not as bright.
• La Luna Caffe (403 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge) — They don’t have the best layout but the imported gelato more than made up for it. If you have a sweet tooth this might not be a good place to study. During the two hours I was there, I had a tiramisu AND two scoops of nicciola and I’m not even into sweets (well I guess I have a weakness for Italian sweets). I hear they have great espresso and they also have live jazz on Thursday and Friday nights. And oh, free wireless.

Libraries:

• Somerville Public Library West Branch (40 College Ave, Somerville) — Tiny and cute, this library feels more like a house. The light situation isn’t the best since they keep the shades drawn all the time, but it is passable.
• Boston Public Library (700 Boylston St, Boston) — The outdoor garden seats are absolutely amazing during good weather. They have a cafe too. I’ve only poked my head in there once, don’t remember much about it, will report back if I stop over again.
• MIT Rotch Library of Architecture & Planning (77 Massachusetts Ave, building 7-238, Cambridge) — It has a large, open study space with a whole wall of windows overlooking Mass Ave. The light situation doesn’t get better than this. It’s superb for some quiet reading/studying. The library has a calm, upbeat and pleasant feel. it doesn’t feel as geeky as the Science & Humanities Library.
• MIT Science & Humanities Library (160 Memorial Dr, building 14S-134, Cambridge) — Study area with a good view of the Charles River.

Places I investigated and didn’t like

• Simon’s Coffeeshop (1736 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge) — The layout is very awkward. It’s basically a long narrow hallway lined with chairs. You won’t see me working here.
• 1369 Cafe (1369 Cambridge St & 757 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge) — Very crowded, hard to get a seat. The layout isn’t great and light situation suboptimal.
• Harvard Coop Cafe (1400 Masssachusetts Ave, Cambridge) — No natural light, terrible layout

Mix it up:

• Miracle of Science Bar and Grill (321 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge) — If you are in one of those moods where you’d like to get liquored up before you code or write that novel, then this is the place to be. Bright with windows on two sides, this little bar will satisfy your thirst (for a fee) and all your wifi needs (for free).
• Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (280 The Fenway, Boston)– My favorite place in Boston! The courtyard is absolutely stunning. You can’t study here. But come on a weekday in non-touristy season, bring a novel (preferably historical fiction), grab a seat on one of the benches around the courtyard and read for an hour (any longer than that your ass will start hurting). I guarantee you will feel divine. To top it off, treat yourself to a decadent dessert in their award-winning cafe before you head out, Mmmm). I love this place so much I just got an annual membership card. Oh yeah, this is the only place that isn’t free on this list (unless your name is Isabella that is, apparently, all people named Isabella get in for free).

Places yet to look into:

• Mariposa Bakery (424 Massachusetts Ave)
• Grand Coffeehouse (61 Somerville Ave, Somerville) — free wireless
• Darwin’s Ltd (148 Mount Auburn St, & 1629 Cambridge St, Cambridge) – free wireless
• Trident Booksellers & Cafe (338 Newbury Street) — free wireless (no outlets)
• Mary Baker Eddy Library (200 Masschusetts Ave, Boston) — gorgeous on the outside, curious to see what it looks like on the inside.

If you have any hard working friends who are looking for a change of scenery, feel free to forward this along. If you know a good place that’s not on the list, let me know and I’ll add it on.

My Peeps obby has failed miserably. This is the obby where I’m supposed to find/create a community of self-employed people. What I envision is a group that meets regularly to socialize, bounce around ideas, and generally support one another in our pursuits.

This is the first obby I started when I moved back to Boston. I posted an ad on Craig’s List, got some responses, and formed a self-employed women’s lunch group. We met a few times. Then, I was out out of town for a while and no one organized any activities. Slowly, the group fizzled out, all except for one or two women that I still keep in touch with.

I place a lot of importance on this obby because I’ve been warned that life as a self-employed person can be quite isolating. Seeing how I’m a very social person, I’m especially wary of this aspect of my new life. Now that I’m out of school and not working at a regular job, I don’t have anyone to interact with during the day. I want my own colleagues. You know, people to chat around the water cooler with and to eat lunch with, people to go to happy hours with and play softball with. Wait a minute, I don’t even play softball, but you get the idea, basically the social interactions that working people take for granted. Even though I’m doing all these fun projects, I miss the camaraderie, the feeling that we are all in this thing together.

You can understand my excitement then when I got this email about a business mixer from the MIT alumni association. Business? Business? Did someone say business? I went bright and early. It was held at an Irish pub in Kendall Square. To facilitate interaction, the event organizer asked everyone to put a colored dot on their name tag. ORANGE means you are an entrepreneur, BLUE means you are looking for a job and YELLOW means you are an investor. Since I’m an entrepreneur wanna be, I put on an orange dot. There were a few obligatory introductions but after a while, I found myself in some very engaging conversations. I met someone who’s starting a biotech company and several Internet startup founders.

At one point, I was approached by a very businesslike women in her late forties wearing a yellow dot. She shook hands with me and looked directly into my eyes,

“Tell me about your business.”

I was taken by surprise, then quickly gave her the two sentence oh-I-just-got-out-of-school-and-am-brainstorming-for-a-business-idea introduction. I saw impatience and disappointment quickly flash across her face (I’m getting better at reading people), and without blinking an eye she said,

“Get back to me when you have an idea”, and moved on.

Right then and there, I felt terrible. I felt rejected and out of place. “Why am I here?” I asked myself. All around me are go-getters building growth companies and hoping to make millions and billions. Here I am, dreaming to start tiny businesses that will hopefully generate enough income to make a living. When I think about it, our interaction was perfectly normal. She has money to invest and she’s looking for that little company that’s going to be the next Google, and she sure isn’t going to waste her time hobnobbing with an obbyist. She is just doing her job and pursuing her own goals. From my side, I should have recognized it when I’m not among those that will likely be part of my community and moved on. But somehow I let it get to me. I think the old go-getter in me is upset. Just because I figured out what it is that will make me happy in the long run — doing obbies with people, doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy to walk the walk.

The lesson I learned that night is not necessarily that I should stay away from MIT business mixers or all go-getters, but that I should be more deliberate when I go into these situations. If I decide that it is indeed worthwhile to go, I will need to inoculate myself psychologically beforehand so I don’t get swept up in other people’s goals or my own insecurities. I will need to figure out exactly what my goals are for attending that event and to meditate on them, to visualize what they mean to me in gory details. For example, my goal for attending that business social was to find people to join my community. I ought to visualize what kind of people I’m looking for. What are their mannerisms? What are their personal qualities? What do they care about? The more focused I am about what it is I want, the less likely it is that I will get distracted, including by my own emotions.

Back to what I was saying before, I’m still looking for my peeps (people who are self-employed or spend a good portion of their time pursuing independent projects, AND who are interested in making new friends). Maybe I will try events sponsored by the chamber of commerce. Any suggestions on where and how I can find them? Do you know anyone personally that you think I should meet?

Here is an update on the Save the Dan obby. I consulted with a health counselor at MIT Medical. She recommended the book The Sugar Addict’s Total Recovery Program by Dr. Kathleen DesMaisons. I just read it and here is what I learned.

DesMaisons’s research shows that sugar addicts may have their body biochemistry to blame. Three inherited factors apparently contribute to sugar addiction: carbohydrate sensitivity, low levels of serotonin and low levels of endorphin. When you eat carbs, your blood sugar rises, and the body releases insulin to regulate blood sugar. If you have carbohydrate sensitivity, your blood sugar increases faster than it should. Your body overreacts and produces too much insulin, which cause your blood sugar to drop quickly. So, you tend to go on sugar high-low swings. Two hours after a donut, you suddenly find yourself dying for food, you eat whatever is in sight.

If you naturally have lower levels of serotonin in your brain, then you are likely to be more impulsive and prone to depression. Sugar, as well as simple carbs that quickly turn into sugar (bread and pasta), will immediately give you a comforting feeling which temporarily eases the depression.

The third factor that contributes to sugar addiction is low levels of endorphin. Endorphin is the natural pain killer your brain produces that gives you a euphoric feeling. Endorphin levels apparently also affect self-esteem and sense of confidence. Sugar can activate endorphin. If your body doesn’t naturally produce enough endorphin, it tries to compensate by upregulating (opening more endorphin receptors), which will give you a much bigger response when you do eat sugar. In effect, your sugar high is much more intense than someone with normal endorphin levels. This is why a sugar sensitive person feels like he’s in heaven when eating an ice cream cone. All these factors combine to make sugar irresistible.

The book then goes on to outline a simple seven step program to eliminate sugar cravings and overcome the addiction. You will have to read the book to get the details. The key, according to DesMaisons, is to eat some protein with every meal (especially breakfast), and to eat a small potato (with the skin) before bed. I know, the potato part is a little weird, but it is supposed to raise your serotonin levels in a natural way. It’s that or Prozac.

I’m starting Dan on the program as of tomorrow. We’ll see how it works.

Have you ever broken up with someone? Or rather, have you ever contemplated breaking up with someone? If your answer is yes, then you may be familiar with this line of thinking, “I hate the way he … and … and I really can’t stand it when he…. BUT, he is really awesome in so many ways. He is … and … and he makes me … What do I do?!?!?”

If you ask John Gottman, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, he would have given you a pretty good answer without even having had met you or your S.O. Well, let me rephrase. He wouldn’t tell you what you should do, but what is likely to happen, as in whether the two of you will end up staying together in the years to come. After having studied over three thousand couples, Gottman is able to predict with 95% accuracy whether a couple will stay together. The key, according to him, lies in the ratio of positive vs. negative interactions. He found that in order for a relationship to be stable, positive interactions have to outnumber negative interactions by a factor of 5 to 1. For couples that fall short of this ratio, the relationship tends to spiral into negativity and eventually end in breakup.

Contrary to popular belief, Gottman found that a couple doesn’t necessarily have to be excellent communicators who always work out their problems calmly and agreeably. A volatile couple can have a great relationship too because the heated arguments and screaming fights are often offset by passionate makeups and uproarious good times. In contrast, an avoidant couple may rarely confront their differences head-on — they simply agree to disagree. But, these couples tend to lead separate lives and are often more reserved in their expressions of affection for one another. In their own way, they can also strike the 5:1 balance and be pretty happy together. The problem comes when a volatile person dates an avoidant person. In these cases, the avoidant partner would often feel attacked and picked on while the volatile partner would experience a lot of frustration, since from their perspective, their partner is always running away from the problems and never seems to face things head on.

In his book Why Marriages Succeed or Fail, Gottman gives solid advice to help couples fight in a more compatible manner. After all,

total negativity = amount of negativity generated by a fight x fight frequency.

Therefore, both fighting less and fighting better can reduce the total amount of negativity you experience in a relationship. By learning to fight in a more compatible way, the amount of negativity generated by a fight is reduced. When the two of you work on the problems in your relationship actively, presumably, you are able to fight less and less over time.

OK, before I start making bad Fight Club jokes, I just want to shift the topic away from negativity to positivity. I happened upon Gottman’s book a few years ago and it had fundamentally changed the way I view relationships. I used to approach relationship problems with the attitude of “leave no stone unturned”. I wanted to get to the bottom of everything. Underlying that behavior is the implicit assumption that problems in relationships need to be solved ASAP before they breed more problems in the future. There is definitely truth in that and this approach works fine a lot of the time. This belief, combined with the fact that I’m a compulsive problem solver, tend to make me focus on the negative aspects of a relationship. Until I read Gottman’s book, I had never conceived of the possibility that it might be OK to let some problems be.

The choice seems clear when you put things this way: if you can either work to decrease the problem from a 2.3 to a 2.1, or you can devote that same energy to make the amount of fun you have increase from a 4 to a 9, it’s obviously more productive to choose the latter. Personally, I’ve found new meaning in the old advice of “focus on the positive” or “just have fun.” Of course, having fun together often entails having free time and not feeling stressed out. These realizations have been shaping my life choices in the last few years, particularly now. I just wanted to share with you what I learned from Gottman’s book since it had helped me so much. The book Blink that I was reading opens with Gottman’s work in the first chapter but doesn’t go into too much detail. Gottman has a new book out that I haven’t read. It’s supposed to be really good. He also wrote a book called The Mathematics of Marriage. I just checked it out of the library. If I start posting about the trajectory of Brangelina in phase space, you will know why .

Do you believe in true love? As in, there is one person out there that
you are meant to be with? Some people do. Then, there are the rest of us
who hold a more pluralistic view: there is a pool of people out there that
for all intents and purposes, will make us pretty happy. Of course, these
two views aren’t necessarily at odds with one another. For instance,
within any pool there might still be an ordering. Technically, we can
call the person who ranks the highest our true love. Although in our
case, the second and third place is basically almost as good. Whereas if
you believe in one true love, then the drop off is much sharper.

The true love advocates believe that the size of everyone’s pool is
exactly 1. If you subscribe to this belief, then the rest of this post is
irrelevant. But if you think there are more than one person in your pool,
then the question is just how many people are in there? Are there
hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of potential true loves? The
actual number is relevant here, because all else being equal, the
probability of finding a person you love is directly proportional to the
size of your pool.

One way to estimate this number is to ask yourself roughly one out of how
many people do you consider to be true love material. Is it one in a
hundred? A thousand? Five thousand? Ten thousand? I know this feels
rather abstract. One way to ground these numbers is to think back to your
high school. Roughly how many people would you date from your high
school? How many out of that number would you guess would have turned out
pretty well? Then, divide that number by the number of people in your
high school. As I write this I’m realizing that it may not be a good
measure. If you didn’t particularly enjoy your high school years
(speaking from personal experience here), your numbers are likely to be
skewed. Well, all I ask is that you make a stab at it.

Once you have settled on a ratio, the number will fall out. Starting from
300,000,000, the population of the U.S., roughly 2/3 of the population are
adults over the age of eighteen, according to the census. Which leaves us
200,000,000. Then out of this number, roughly 2/3 are married. That
leaves us 66,000,000 single adults to work with. Assuming that you are
only interested in one of the two genders, cut that number by half which
leaves us 33,000,000. Finally, say if you believe that 1 out of 1,000 people
qualifies as true love material, that means your pool has 33,000 people in
it in the entire U.S.. To make that number a little more concrete, say
you live in Boston, a city with population of 600,000. Then roughly 66
people in your pool would reside in the same city. Of course, we have
made many wild assumptions in this calculation, including that the
concentration of your true love is the same in Boston as it is in Lyndon,
Kansas (no offense Liana ).

Another way to make some rough estimates would be to start from the
qualities you care about and ask yourself what percentage of the
population exhibit those qualities. Say you care about honesty, maybe you
think 1 out of 10 people is honest. Say you care about attractiveness,
maybe you deem 20% of all people attractive. Now, what other
characteristics are absolute musts for you? Sense of Humor? Height?
Success? Income? Intelligence? Sense of adventure? Reliability?

Let’s just assume that there are 10 characteristics that you absolutely
care about and that you want the top 50% in each of them. Now, what’s the
probability that a random person will meet all your 10 characteristics?
That would be 1/2 x 1/2 x … x 1/2, or 1/2 to the tenth power, which is
1/1024, or roughly one in a thousand. If on the other hand, there turn
out to be 20 characteristics that you care about, that would yields 1 in
1,048,576. If indeed one in a million meets your criteria then that means
there are only 33 people out of the entire U.S. in your pool! The city of
Boston is too small to contain even one single person. These figures tend
to suggest that we shouldn’t be too picky. Since, each factor you care
about can cut your pool by half. Plus, we are only talking about twenty factors
here. For many people, attractiveness alone can easily occupy ten of the
twenty factors (facial features, body proportion, amount of chest hair, etc.
Shall I remind you the man-hands episode from Seinfeld?).

The good news is that things aren’t quite as bad because previously, we
had assumed that all characteristics are mutually independent. Which is
not true in reality. Indeed, researchers have shown for example that a person’s
height is linked to success. Apparently, a disproportionally high
percentage of CEOs are tall. So if you like tall and successful people,
then your pool might be bigger than if you had picked two completely
independent characteristics. But things can also work the other way. If
you want someone who’s laid back and intense, if you want an adventurous
joker who’s also dependable, or if you want a highly successful person who
won’t make you move when she gets a better job offer at east-bum-f*ck,
then the pool might shrink faster. Since, the personality traits that
give rise to these divergent characteristics are often at odds with one
another and hard to come by in the same person.

Having a better picture of how these characteristics are interrelated will yield more accurate estimates. It would be interesting to construct a probabilistic model for the set of common characteristics. Perhaps the joint distribution can be represented as a Bayesian network. We can use data from social science and psychology to determine the independence relationships between some of the characteristics. Once constructed, this model can be used as the basis for a true love calculator. You select your location (e.g. Boston), the characteristics you care about (e.g. honesty, shoe size, cleanliness) and specify how strictly each criterion is to be measured (e.g. 10% or 20% of the population), hit “enter”, then out pops the number of true loves who live in your city (if it can give you their names and addresses, then we are talking…).

Can you think of other ways to estimate the size of a given person’s true love pool?