I once again have the chance to write a For Math’s Sake column in the Valentine’s Day issue, which is a good opportunity to showcase the connections mathematics has with love and relationships, or share about how cultivating love for an at-times challenging and painfully frustrating subject can help in other areas of life. This year, I would like to comment on some statistics around love, dating, and other aspects of human connection with a hopefully new perspective.
I say hopefully new, because there are many views about, say, the decline of dating and sex among young adults; the increasing average age of those who get married, along with a decrease in marriage rates; or even whether there is a growing political gap between men and women. One also sees a variety of perspectives and accounts published in The New York Times’ “Modern Love” column (ranging from expert findings to wild and crazy love stories), The New Yorker’s book reviews (recently, this one about consent), or even The Atlantic’s Sophie Gilbert on the prevalence of porn and Harper’s Magazine’s Daniel Kolitz on “The Goon Squad” (the last two especially are difficult reads).
On a mathematical level, one must be especially careful when interpreting statistics, as I’ve also written about before. It is immensely challenging to obtain a sample that represents the overall population with some degree of accuracy. Statisticians have some extremely clever ways to mitigate this challenge, but even when done effectively, others can take statistics out of context or warp their interpretation to the point that numbers get weaponized in the political, cultural, and, yes, romantic spheres.
This misinterpretation and weaponization of course has several harmful effects, but I think a primary problem in the context of love and relationships is how such statistics miss the exclusively individual experiences of love stories. A way I like to think about this is with romantic comedies: there are tons of romcoms out there, ranging from all-time classics to scripts prevalent with cringe. I think the classics become classics precisely because they include some truly unique elements that separate those stories from the standard, generic romcoms. These unique elements, meanwhile, are outliers in a statistical setting, so they often will not find their way into the resulting average-case or best-fit analyses.
It can become more difficult when mathematical algorithms play an increasing role in how dating plays out, either through finding dates themselves, or deciding what is a “trendy” date idea. This is not to say that dating apps or social media accounts have an inherently bad influence on the dating scene – for instance, it seems that a good percentage of long-term relationships today stem from meeting people online. But, one again should not jump to conflate good predictive powers of certain algorithms with the algorithm actually having a sense of love and human connection under the hood.
I think what can help alleviate some of these difficulties is to view these online services as additional tools that you can use as you see fit to find deeper connections with others, rather than the be-all end-all of obtaining good relationships in 2026 and beyond. These tools can help create opportunities for those truly unique moments to happen, or you can look for other ways to make these moments possible.
In the end though, it is vital for all of us to continue doing whatever we can to stay connected with others, while also staying open to new experiences that can make a lifetime of difference. In Good Will Hunting, a mathematical romcom of sorts (although this is stretching the analogy to its limits!), this looks like skipping what turned out to be an iconic World Series game to “go see about a girl.” In a world that can feel dominated by statistics, numbers, and algorithms, I wish you many happy moments with your friends, loved ones, and new acquaintances this Valentine’s season.
