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Comment by eli_gottlieb | Hacker News Reader

Are you on the West Coast of the USA? It could just be that your problem is that single-male and single-female populations have segregated themselves geographically, as in the US. Over there, the West Coast has a huge surplus of single males, the East Coast has a huge surplus of single females, and as you move towards the center of the country (where I think people are less geographically mobile, and thus less self-segregating) the surpluses disappear.

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If I understand you and your parent correctly then what you're each implying about differences in numbers of single men seeking women and single women seeking men within a given area appears to violate at least one of a few basic and seemingly-reasonable assumptions:

1. The ratio of females to males is very close to 1 anywhere in the country.

2. Heterosexuality, homosexuality, etc. is about the same in males and females.

3. Almost everyone who does not identify as "single" is in an exclusive relationship with one person.

I don't live in the US so am quite probably missing something here that you know and I don't. Or my reasoning is mistaken. Could you clarify?

I think the reason for the difference is pretty clear. By the West Coast the parent really means Silicon Valley and Washington, the major tech hubs. In Silicon Valley in particular, that is the industry. And, of course, plenty of the employees are imported from other areas, and the professional gender balance in this industry skews overwhelmingly male. So it creates a corresponding gender imbalance in the surrounding geography.

And those non-native employees come from somewhere, which is predominantly the East Coast, because companies can pick up employees from there who are U.S. citizens and have attended good universities. So it makes those populations skew slightly female.

Right, I see. My instincts about the US are non-existent, but your explanation combined with some googling of the populations and land sizes of those areas has made it much clearer. Thanks!

#1 is an incorrect assumption:

http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/people/IMAGES/gender-fig4....

Aha, I did not realise that. How interesting. Thanks!

The values on that map are a little frustrating, have we got anything which offers more precision for those enormous 1-91 and 108-205 ranges? I look at that and think "Across the country the ratio could only vary between about 9 men for every 10 women and 9 women for every 10 men and the diagram would still be totally correct - is that even really significant?".

("Is that even really significant?" is a whole other question that I'm sure someone can easily answer. I don't have any intuition about how skewed a gender ratio has to be for it to be noticeable to a member of that population, certainly if someone told me that there were only 9 women for every 10 men in a city I wouldn't immediately think my chances of hooking up would be hurt too much...would they?)

I think that the places covered by those enormous ranges can be fairly comfortably assumed to almost all be close to 91 and 108.

As for a 9:10 ratio, it all depends on the rate of committed relationships. Remember that this is all people, married, committed, and single. If they're all single, 9:10 is probably pretty good. If 95% of people are in a committed relationship (ignoring homosexuality, which probably cancels out) then you have no hope at all. If we pick a more sane number like, say, 75% (not sure how sane, but...) then that results in about the singles scene having about a 2:3 ratio, which is not so great for the people on the 3 side.

According to the statistics site that the OP used, 54 million Americans are single. [1] Ignoring the 62 million Americans that are under fifteen, we find that only 21% of American adults are available. [2] So if your area's ratio is 9:10 and ~80% of the people are taken, you end up with a 7:12 ratio among the singles (ignoring homosexuality).

[1] http://www.statisticbrain.com/online-dating-statistics/

[2] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

Great explanation! I have a much clearer understanding of it now. Cheers :)

Which part of it is supposed to be incorrect? The map has basically the western half of the country blue and the eastern half red.

Is the contention the word "huge" because the disparity is only ~103:100 in a lot of places? Because that's actually pretty big when it comes to dating, because of the "available pool" problem: Most members of both genders are paired up already, and each pair removes one member from each pool. Those with a different sexual orientation from you or those not actively seeking a relationship come out of the pool too. So you go from 103:100 to something like 13:10, which is pretty huge.

I think you're a little confused. I'm replying to someone who stated an assumption that the male:female ratio is very close to 1:1 everywhere in the US. I said that is incorrect, and demonstrated with a map of gender ratios. Your apparently-disagreeing reply to me is actually saying what I'm saying.

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