Vignettes from my life, romance math, Saudi Arabia vs United Arab Emirates, and cheap Chinese watches || Forecasting newsletter III/2026
Purveying high quality decorrelated tokens
I. So I’m chilling in Asunción, and I meet this cute yoga teacher. We have a short relationship, and I find her very attractive, given as how she had mastered a tradition of knowledge orthogonal to mine, thus I fall head over heels in love. But it turns out that she doesn’t want to have a family, wants to dedicate her life to God, is becoming a nun, and is on her way to a convent in Italy to try out. Imagine, reader, when I put my skills, cunning and will on the table and I get rejected for… God.
II. I was talking with an acquaintance, now friend, about whether this person should break up with their partner, and I thought I’d collect some general interest probabilistic models for romance and breakups. Here is the best distribution of the length of relationships I’ve found: