It's all about the numbers - landing an interview by pumping out your resume

A friend of mine recently commented about how she didn't land an interview for some internship that she applied to. It was disappointing, naturally, but what I couldn't figure out was why she applied to just a handful of internships. After all, from the human resources point of view, it really is all about the numbers, regardless of how well the economy is doing (Although obviously, in better economic times, you are more likely to get interviewed).

I think that one needs to apply to tens of hundreds of jobs in order to get your resume even looked at, and this is how I have chosen to explain this:

Let's assume that the probability of you landing an interview for one job application is p. Therefore the probability of you not landing an interview is 1-p. And if you apply to n jobs, then the probability of you not landing any interview is (1-p)^n. And the probability of you landing at least one interview is 1 - (1-p)^n. So if I would want my chances of getting an interview to be more than 50%, the equation I would need to solve is: 1 - (1-p)^n > 0.5.

Simple enough. So let's select some random probabilities of getting an interview for p.

If the probability of getting an interview is = 0.1, then you need to send out 7 resumes in order guarantee yourself at least 1 interview.

Obviously 0.1 is a really high probability, unless you are a genius, so let's work with some more realistic ones.

if p = 0.01, then n needs to be 69 job applications.
if p = 0.001, then n needs to be 693 job applications.

Well, you get the idea. In order to maximize the chance of you landing an interview, you really need to pump out that resume to as many places as possible. Obviously this model is extremely simple, with several non-realistic assumptions, but I feel that, generally speaking, this idea holds true.

Sadly, since its not at all possible these days, we have to wait for 693 jobs to open up. And after that, we still need to ace the interview. And I don't have an probabilistic scenarios or models for that. That's all on you!

Money saving tips from crazy people

In these harsh economic times, saving money is on everyone's mind. Google is now moderating a website called 'Tip Jar' where it gathers tips from users and various websites. Readers can rank these tips and the ones that are ranked highest, obviously pop up first. A lot of them are quite sensible, but some near the bottom of the page are just plain stupid. I'll share the ones I find most amusing.

"Breast feed your children for the health benefits (to mother and child) and take the cost savings of not buying formula and bottles as an added bonus. Even with the costs of a breast pump and storage supplies, you'll still come out way ahead."

Health: "Using a cotton ball, apply vodka to your face as an astringent to cleanse the skin and tighten pores"

Tech: "Use google maps to create a cultural/contextual map of your community"

Misc: "Take the extra time to spell things correctly - it shows you care about who's reading what you've written. Grammar, spelling and punctuation are often overlooked when communicating via the Internet."

Misc: "Do not eat yellow snow."

Lack of unselfish attractive women driving force behind being single

A female friend of mine and I were talking about dating in broad terms and she mused upon the fact that one often sees an 'attractive' girl on the arm of an 'average' looking guy. She says its really rare to see a really good looking guy with an average looking girl. Her reasoning was that women are a lot less picky about a guy's looks. Guy's on the other hand, she claimed, are extremely picky and care more about the girls looks. We may argue as to what the reasons for this are, but one can't argue against this observable trend. Her observations are quite on the spot.

Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and these are subjective terms of description, but one can make a few assumptions, build a simple model and see what the conclusions are. And if I offend anyone along the way...too bad.

Assumptions:

1. Attractive women prefer attractive men and average men equally
2. Assume a global scale of attractiveness, with attractive and average the only two categories
   
3. Random mixing of both sexes
   
4. Complete mixing towards a steady state
5. Maximum likelihood estimates of probabilities at equilibrium
6. Let attractive girls be the driving force behind dating
   

Method and Results:

• Let x be the proportion of attractive girls and y be the proportion of attractive boys
• Upon complete mixing, x/2 attractive girls will be with attractive boys and x/2 with average boys.
  
• y-x/2 attractive boys remain without a partner
• y-x/2 average girls remain without a partner
• If y-x/2 = 0, (i.e. no attractive single boys remain or no single average looking girls remain) x = 2y

Conclusions and discussion:

According to this model, if one wants the entire population to have a partner, then there needs to be twice as many pretty girls as attractive men. It seems that this inherent lack of 'pickiness' in girls is keeping average looking girls from finding a partner. If attractive girls were as selfish as attractive boys, then there wouldn't be any single people left over.

So where do homosexual people fit in to this model? Well, they don't really but one can see where they might be involved. According to this model, the only groups of people not with someone of the opposite sex are average looking girls and good looking men. And you know what they say about gay guys and lesbians. Maybe this model is on one extreme end, but reality is somewhere closer to this model than to a model which includes only dating within your league.

Link to whale evolution from land to sea was found in Pakistan

I was watching Morphed on National Geographic TV this evening. It's a 3 part series about evolution, strategically timed with Darwin's 200th birthday anniversary. I wasn't shocked to learn that whales evolved from land animals, given that they breathe air and are warm blooded mammals. But I was certainly surprised to learn that the missing links between whales and their land ancestors were found in Pakistan in the 80's, by a University of Michigan Paleontologist, Philip D. Gingerich. That animal is actually called a Pakicetus, believe it or not, named after the country itself. Pretty cool. This is what they were supposed to look like...

Anyway, Dr. Gingerich has visited Pakistan quite often over the past few years, collaborating with research faculty and publishing papers with them. His website has some pictures and details about their excursions in Pakistan. Plus, who doesn't like hearing about their country in a good light, especially one linked with a scientific breakthrough.