Saturday, January 17, 2009

An unnecessarily complicated mathematical model


The mathematical model considers a male and a female in a courtship encounter of unspecified duration, with the game ending when one or other party quits or the female accepts the male as a mate. The model assumes that the male is either a ''good'' or a ''bad'' type from the female's point of view, according to his condition or willingness to care for the young after mating. The female gets a positive payoff from mating if the male is a ''good'' male but a negative payoff if he is ''bad'', so it is in her interest to gain information about the male's type with the aim of avoiding mating with a "bad" male. In contrast, a male gets a positive payoff from mating with any female, though his payoff is higher if he is "good" than if he is "bad". Oh, c'mon! Is this how it works? [Add a pic, per JJ's request.]

8 comments:

Mr roT said...

Couldn't we at least have a picture of a good female? I like the one in this shot. Is she good?

Arelcao Akleos said...

Well, maybe that's how it works for 12% of courtships in, say, Maine.
Build a model, and something somewhere sometime somehow has a chance of fitting it.

AI, my sister called up early this morning saying she is going to be in town after passing through to bring her daughter back to college. Wants to have dinner together. We'll have to try for another day than today.....
... How about monday? Thanks to Martin I've got a free day then.

Tecumseh said...

Actually, I'm taking a quick trip to NYC tomorrow and Monday (hope I won't get totally frozen), so we need to wait then till later in the week -- perhaps next Fr or Sat?

Arelcao Akleos said...

Either day works for me... Friday, actually, might be the best. Will call you on Thursday to see if it works. Enjoy NYC.

My Frontier Thesis said...

What does the one night stand model look like?

Arelcao Akleos said...

Looks like a Dirac delta

Mr roT said...

AI, thank you for civilizing this post. Nothing like a girl in nipple clamps to concentrate the mind.

A link to your source would have been appreciated, but there is a url on the pic...

Mr roT said...

For the lazy.