Crushing hopes
Now Valentine’s Day is safely past in NZ, I can link to a post on It’s a Stat Life, a blog not entirely unlike StatsChat. Robin Evans writes:
A friend pointed me to this story about the average number of men (or rather frogs) a woman has to date before finding their ‘Prince Charming’ (apparently it’s 15). Let’s leave aside for now how they came up with the number: I’ve no doubt the methodology conforms to the most rigorous standards that we’ve all come to expect from the internet. I thought that this paragraph might give some people hope:
If you’ve made out with 11 men, great news! A new survey suggests you’re only 4 away from Prince Charming. On average, anyway.
It’s now my duty to crush that hope.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »