Perfect 10

Slight departure from the blog's purpose but a neat solution to a problem posed by Kevin Bloody Wilson in his song The Perfect Ten. The problem is to bed a girl who scores a 10 in looks etc such as Bo Derek in the film Ten.

Failing at 10 Wilson works his way down the scale seeking to sleep with at least someone. Half way he realises that if he sleeps with two "5s" that is the same as a 10. With this blogs preoccupation with "self" and self-referent systems its interesting that his final position is to reject the "other" and to masturbate using his 10 fingers.

Now is it true that two "5s" make a 10? Some might say that a two-some introduces a new dimension that may be even better than a 10. Others may say that no matter how many 5s they are still not a 10.

Well after many years of musing various approaches a friend came up with the solution. It is Pythagoras. He argued then when faced with trying to get a scalar from multiple dimensions this is the usual approach.

So in fact two "5s" only score Sqrt(5^2 + 5^2) = 7.07

To get a 10 you actually need to sleep with two "7s". Or you would need to sleep with four "5s." and so on like this.

I had a different approach using Optimal Foraging Theory  The problem with bedding a "10" is the amount of work/drink etc involved. You can get a better return by lowering your threshold. In fact this is a strategy observed by the author in student unions.

It was a work break game to think about this. One achievement was an actual definition of "10." It was the Desert Island Test. How long would it take you--were you ship wrecked with this girl--to want to sleep with her. Immediate is the definition of 10. Altho writing this I realise that Von Neumann approach to pricing is better. Faced with two "immediate" girls you may still prefer one over the other so she scores better. I think the original argument had nuances to "immediate" like whether you ran to her or walked and how fast you did this. Another version of the test is how many pints of beer to achieve the same. Armed with this actual definition for Kevin Wilson's numbers it gave a way in to Desert Island modelling where you try to maximise the returns.

Anyway the Pythagorean solution won for its simplicity and surprising effectiveness.

Blogged here not for the ironically sexist joke of it all, but actually seriously for the thinking involved which may be useful to someone one day.