I have finally discovered how Claire made her decision to marry me. Turns out, she’s a huge statistics and probability theorist.

It includes this -very flattering- picture of me. And some high-level mathematics.

Here’s how Claire decided who to marry:

“Surprisingly, … there is a method which enables us to select the best candidate with a probability of nearly 30% even if n is a large number,” writes Gabor Szekely in Paradoxes in Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics (2001). “Let the first 37% (more precisely, 100/e%) of the candidates go and then select the first one better than any previous candidate (if none are better, select the last). In this case the chance of selecting the best is approximately 1/e, i.e. ≈37% however great n is.” – Futility Closet

So, assuming that Claire is a huge fan of this guy Gabor Szekely, she would have applied this to her search for the ideal mate. That would mean I’m at least the 38th guy that Claire has thought about marrying and at the very least the one she liked the most compared to the one in front of me.

But that’s nonsense.

Judging by the above picture, I need to send Dr. Szekely a thank you card.

Incidentally, (In an effort to make this post be about something instead of just my idle chatter) this picture was taken one night at a favorite local establishment of ours; Blind Tiger.

It was later on a weeknight and we hadn’t had dinner and didn’t feel the need to cook, so we walked over to Blind Tiger for some food. When we arrived, the waiter told us that they were only doing a buffet for dinner that night and it was almost finished. I asked what we had to do to eat from the buffet. Behold the dialogue as I remember it:

Waiter:
“Order a Newcastle.”

Me: (internal dialogue) -That’s the catch!
“How much for a Newcastle?”

Waiter:
“$2.50 and you get a free souvenir glass.”

Me:
“We’ll have two.”

Sometimes, there really is such a thing as a free lunch.