#314: Dating Pools explain

[Megan is sitting on the ground with her elbows on her knees and her hands on her chin.]

Megan: This sucks. The median first marriage age is 26. The pool of singles is shrinking. I’m running out of time.

Cueball: Actually, not quite.

Cueball: Yes, older singles are rarer. But as you get older, the dateable age range gets wider. An 18-year-old’s range is 16–22, whereas a 30-year-old’s might be more like 22–46.

Text on chart: Standard creepiness rule: Don’t date under (Age/2 + 7)

Cueball: I did some analysis of this with the Census Bureau numbers just last weekend. Your dating pool actually grows until middle age. So don’t fret so much!

[The first chart is labeled “Singles” and is a decreasing graph. The second graph is labeled Dating Pool, and is a bell curve.]

Megan: Did your analysis say anything about the dating prospects of people who spend weekends at home making graphs?

Cueball: Come on. Somewhere at the edge of the bell curve is the girl for me.