How long must you date before finding ‘the one’? And how many dates and rejections will you have to endure? This dating calculator uses a unique strategy that tells you what to expect, as well as how to increase your odds of finding your ideal partner.
With all the online dating sites and apps available today, it’s easier than ever to meet singles anywhere in the world.
Yet no matter how easy it gets to find potential dating partners, it’s still a challenge to know when you’ve found the right one. How do you decide?
Here’s a dating theory calculator based on mathematical theory and hundreds of years of research, to help you decide. It was developed by physicist Dominik Czernia, PhD.
For all the nerdy details on how the calculator works, some tips on using it, and how it came about, skip to the article below.
Dating Calculator – How Long to Date Before Deciding on a Partner
Mathematicians have a theory called the optimal stopping rule that can help your dating decisions. It can, they say, tell you when it’s probably time to stop dating and decide. It indicates the point where your choice of a partner is most likely to be the best choice.
The fundamental problem with finding the right partner is that we tend to stop dating too soon. In other words, we settle. It’s human nature.
The same thing happens in business and in all other areas of our lives. For example, a company must decide when to stop de-bugging a product and bring it to market. Or they must decide when to stop interviewing and hire someone. If they stop too soon, they have a terrible product on the market or a poor employee in their midst. Stop too late, and they lose revenue or miss hiring a top performer.
For centuries, mathematicians have worked on this stopping problem to figure out the best time to stop an effort so that your odds of success are as high as possible.
Here’s what they found.
When Is It Best to Stop Dating?
So, here’s the gist of how this math works in dating.
Let’s assume you’ll meet ten people throughout your life that could be a good match for you. Which one should you pick?
Of course, we want the best one. But the problem is we can’t review them and rate them all at once. We date them randomly, one at a time, over the course of many years.
Is the current one our perfect match? Maybe the next one is better? Perhaps the fifth potential partner seems best now that we’re on #9, but we can’t go back to #5. Now you can see the problem.
Choose too early and you might miss the best one. Choose too late and you rejected the best one.
The 2-Part Solution on When to Decide on a Partner
The solution to when it’s time to stop dating and start deciding: reject the first 37% of the group of prospective partners, no matter what.
With our example of ten potential partners, that means reject the first four, no matter how good they seem! Then the next step is to pick the first person who comes along who is better than the first four.
What does that do to your odds? In the case of ten people, the probability that you’ve chosen the best person is now 40% versus only 10% if you had chosen randomly.
So, how do we know how many potential partners we’ll have in life? 4…10…15?
We don’t.
But we can make some decisions about our lives that will help our search for the best partner.
- We can decide how long we want to date.
- We can decide how often we want to date.
- We can decide the maximum number of dates.
To use the calculator, pick any 2 from the above list. (Shown in the Number of Dates section illustration below.)
It will give you the answer for the third item. Then most importantly, it will tell you how many people you need to reject before you make the big decision.
For example, the screenshot below shows someone who wants to date for no more than 1 year and will go on up to 4 dates per month. The number of partners to reject is shown in the red box.
In this case, the “optimal stopping point” is 18. They need to reject the first 18 partners, then pick the first partner after that who is better than those 18.
Other Dating Calculator Variables
For those who really want to geek out, there are other variables to play with.
Rejection Chance
Dating is a two-way street. You’re not the only one making decisions here!
Your date can also decide “yes” or “no” about you as a good partner. In the “rejection chance” field, you can pick a percentage of dates that you think are likely to reject you.
Best Partner
The “best partner” field lets you decide whether you want the best partner possible, or if you’d be OK with one of the top 5 or the top 10. In other words, you’ll settle for a little less than best.
Why Not Trust My Gut Instead of Mathematical Dating Calculator?
Of course, nothing in human behavior can be predicted with mathematical certainty. The point of the dating calculator is that it’s a tool to increase your odds of success…by a lot.
Also, when your expectations are realistic, it’s likely you’ll enjoy (rather than endure) the dating process. The dating calculator helps you set realistic expectations.
And of course, you never want to ignore red flags when it comes to deciding on a potential partner. If your gut is telling you something is not right, you should probably listen and explore that little voice.
Have fun with your search for a great relationship and let us know in the comments below if the dating theory calculator helped you in any way.
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