How I met my wife :)
The one good thing about stopping blogging is that when you start, you have a lot to blog about. A lot has happened in my life in the last 2 years, but undoubtedly the biggest thing is that I am now engaged to be married to this wonderful woman, Disha. I was one of those people who thought that nothing could top my 4 years of under-graduate college, but I can say with no hesitation that the last 2 years have been the best 2 years of my life - and then some. :)
My first 2 years in the States were highly average - I traveled a lot, made some great friends and met new family, had a ton of fun, but at the same time I ‘liked’ my job and I was as single as a dollar-bill (my little tribute to Douglas Adams :P ). However, not only was I single, but I was well and truly resigned to the fact that things were never going to change – me and a friend, Gautam Tambay, had done this complex analysis which basically proved that it would take on average 17 years for me to find someone that I could marry (Detailed analysis below :P). Needless to say, nothing could have prepared me for how much my life was going to change.
Disha came to America 3 years back. Her first impression of me was that I was a snob. I don’t blame her – first off I am a snob, and to add to that I used to rarely spend time with her, I would run off to a different city every weekend and I played a pivotal role in her having to live without a roommate for 6 months (I teased her roommate about choosing to stay with D over one of his old friends and he gave in to my teasing).
My first impression of Disha was that she cooked AWESOME food. She used to make rajma and call all of us over and for an Indian boy craving home-cooked food, that was a dream come true. I would never refuse an invitation to come over and pig out – while being a snob of course. :)
At some point I can’t quite remember, I realized that here was this pretty, smart, independent, beautiful, nice and cool single Indian girl in my life and I was doing NOTHING about it. Of course, I immediately 'sprung into action' but things weren't that simple.
You see - pretty, single Indian girls in America are VERY rare, especially ones with all the above-mentioned qualities. Hence, Disha had a long list of guys who were trying to win her over. Luckily for me, she saw something in me and as they say, the rest is history.
Our first date was the night when Disha was moving to a new apartment (and I was being the good friend and helping her move) at this cute Italian restaurant called Edo’s Squid. Disha put it best when she said that for the first time, if someone walked by and assumed that the two of us were dating, she would not mind. : )
Soon we were solidly dating, I would make sure we spent our weekends together…. we would take “coffee” breaks at work. But the real kicker was when Disha asked me if I wanted to learn salsa together. Dance, music, romantic drives and coffee were an intoxicating combination and we were soon love-drunk. Salsa was the perfect excuse to spend time together and flirt. Of course, on non-salsa nights, we also had practice as we were preparing for a big performance.
As it turned out, that was just the beginning – romantic dates, weekend trips, Disha’s business trips to Dallas and the long phone conversations, our India vacations and soon we were a couple. Since then, we have come a long way, but I will save that for another day.
Suffice it to say that Karthik Ramkumar has changed - and if you listen to my friends from high school or IIT, the unanimous decision is that I have changed for the better. However, the biggest change is something no one could have ever predicted. For those of you who know me from my IIT days or my Manipal days, I leave you with this note. If someone told you that some day Karthik Ramkumar would speak more Hindi than English, what would you say.
Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you are going to get. :)
P.S: Happy birth-week, Disha : )
Detailed analysis as promised
Key assumptions on which analysis was based
i) I want to marry an Indian girl
ii) I had met ~6 Indian girls who passed the basic constraints like age, being single etc. in my first 2 years in the states. Assume that meeting a girl is a Poisson process, this means that I am likely to meet about 3 girls a year as long as I am in the States.
iii) Assume that I am a good match for 1 in 10 girls that I meet. Say that 1 in 10 girls I meet are a good match for me. These are very aggressive assumptions. :P
Conclusion
- I need to meet 100 girls to find someone I can marry. Given 3 girls a year that will take 33 years.
- This means that on average it will take me 16.5 years to find someone
- Oops :)
My first 2 years in the States were highly average - I traveled a lot, made some great friends and met new family, had a ton of fun, but at the same time I ‘liked’ my job and I was as single as a dollar-bill (my little tribute to Douglas Adams :P ). However, not only was I single, but I was well and truly resigned to the fact that things were never going to change – me and a friend, Gautam Tambay, had done this complex analysis which basically proved that it would take on average 17 years for me to find someone that I could marry (Detailed analysis below :P). Needless to say, nothing could have prepared me for how much my life was going to change.
Disha came to America 3 years back. Her first impression of me was that I was a snob. I don’t blame her – first off I am a snob, and to add to that I used to rarely spend time with her, I would run off to a different city every weekend and I played a pivotal role in her having to live without a roommate for 6 months (I teased her roommate about choosing to stay with D over one of his old friends and he gave in to my teasing).
My first impression of Disha was that she cooked AWESOME food. She used to make rajma and call all of us over and for an Indian boy craving home-cooked food, that was a dream come true. I would never refuse an invitation to come over and pig out – while being a snob of course. :)
At some point I can’t quite remember, I realized that here was this pretty, smart, independent, beautiful, nice and cool single Indian girl in my life and I was doing NOTHING about it. Of course, I immediately 'sprung into action' but things weren't that simple.
You see - pretty, single Indian girls in America are VERY rare, especially ones with all the above-mentioned qualities. Hence, Disha had a long list of guys who were trying to win her over. Luckily for me, she saw something in me and as they say, the rest is history.
Our first date was the night when Disha was moving to a new apartment (and I was being the good friend and helping her move) at this cute Italian restaurant called Edo’s Squid. Disha put it best when she said that for the first time, if someone walked by and assumed that the two of us were dating, she would not mind. : )
Soon we were solidly dating, I would make sure we spent our weekends together…. we would take “coffee” breaks at work. But the real kicker was when Disha asked me if I wanted to learn salsa together. Dance, music, romantic drives and coffee were an intoxicating combination and we were soon love-drunk. Salsa was the perfect excuse to spend time together and flirt. Of course, on non-salsa nights, we also had practice as we were preparing for a big performance.
As it turned out, that was just the beginning – romantic dates, weekend trips, Disha’s business trips to Dallas and the long phone conversations, our India vacations and soon we were a couple. Since then, we have come a long way, but I will save that for another day.
Suffice it to say that Karthik Ramkumar has changed - and if you listen to my friends from high school or IIT, the unanimous decision is that I have changed for the better. However, the biggest change is something no one could have ever predicted. For those of you who know me from my IIT days or my Manipal days, I leave you with this note. If someone told you that some day Karthik Ramkumar would speak more Hindi than English, what would you say.
Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you are going to get. :)
P.S: Happy birth-week, Disha : )
Detailed analysis as promised
Key assumptions on which analysis was based
i) I want to marry an Indian girl
ii) I had met ~6 Indian girls who passed the basic constraints like age, being single etc. in my first 2 years in the states. Assume that meeting a girl is a Poisson process, this means that I am likely to meet about 3 girls a year as long as I am in the States.
iii) Assume that I am a good match for 1 in 10 girls that I meet. Say that 1 in 10 girls I meet are a good match for me. These are very aggressive assumptions. :P
Conclusion
- I need to meet 100 girls to find someone I can marry. Given 3 girls a year that will take 33 years.
- This means that on average it will take me 16.5 years to find someone
- Oops :)
posted by Karthik at 2:08 PM
8 Comments:
i love the analysis... it's so tambay! (what worries me, of course, as his girlfriend, is the possibility that *his* number might be even higher! ;-))
-- simran
well the good news about the analysis is that it's slightly flawed! Here you are assuming 0 correlation between the events A = (You are a good match for someone) and B = (Someone is a good match for you). Since P(A) = 1/10 and P(B) = 1/10 by assumption, P(A intersection B) will equal P(A).P(B) = 1/100 only when A and B are independent, i.e, P(A|B) = P(A) and P(B|A) = P(B). However, we can assume significant correlation here, and so P(A|B) and P(B|A) may be as high as 1/2. Hence, P(A intersection B) = P(A).P(B|A) = P(B).P(A|B) = (1/10).(1/2) = 1/20 ! So you should meet someone like this once every 6.66 years, and on average you should find someone in 3.33 years time! This all-important correlation effect is why i haven't thrown myself out of the balcony yet ;-). Although there is a good chance that a painfully nerdy piece like this one may have sent P(A) for me to infinitesimally small levels!
I agree with MVN. I spent the last half an hour trying to see why there would be any correlation at all between the two events and convinced myself that there is indeed a high correlation. This is under the assumption that Kram shows some interest in a woman who shows interest in him, and vice versa. All bow to MVN for pointing out this important effect. ^:)^
Duh, you are the same as before, except that you speak hindi :P
That conversation can be left for later, since I find a situation that needs much more serious attention. I find it no wonder that the world is facing such a recession. All consultants, credit card ppls (or in other words non-engg. junta) have random theories.
There are 4 events really.
A: X is a good match for Y
B: Y is a good match for X
C: X shows interest in Y
D: Y shows interest in X
E: Z has more money than X/Y
F: Z is approximately equal to Brad Pitt/Priyanka Chopra
You have spoken of the theoretical possibilities only that X and Y could be good matches for each other. However, it is not necessary that X and Y realize this. For example, as cheap Duh mentions, it took him time to realize that he was interested in Duhsha, and so there is a probability P(C|A) that you have to model.
Moreover, you have to model the ever-present noise in the model, where all this 'idealistic' interest goes out the window on being presented with extremely hot / rich potential partners.
Therefore, I suggest stop dwelling into such statistics since the numbers and hence reality, only get starker. Carpet bombing is the way to go. As research has shown in the past, irrespective of the application, brute force methods get you to the goal for sure. It's only that the worst time complexity might be bad.
Jose's take on the events:
The world's financial situation is so bad that women are actually marrying for love. :-)
Nice cover Duh. But I know you and Disha met on craigslist casual encounters section!
I thought I would post a nice senti blog entry about me and Disha.
In retrospect, I should have realized what I would be kicking off with my analysis. :)
Cheers all! Keep checking back. I hope to get my blog up and running again.
good job with the analysis you engineers/consultants etc. Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to go out and change the only parameter that really matters - get out and meet more women.
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