splinter theory

i had a really fun discussion with my friend forrest yesterday, where he shared with me the splinter theory of dating/attraction/marriage/yadda/yadda/what-have-you... i had a similar theory, but i think the way he expresses it is a better operationalization (yes, that is a word), so i think i'll defenestrate mine and adopt his. let me share my own specific description of this with you...

first, let's take a look at a standard/normal distribution bell curve.

now, let us assume that the horizontal axis represents a scale of attractiveness, with the vertical scale being simply the value of n, the number of cases.

the left-hand tail, roughly the lower stanine*, represents those unfortunate individuals who are undeniably unattractive; the right hand tail consists of those blessed individuals who are undeniably attractive; and the vast majority of people lie somewhere in between.

this theory posits that persons within the upper and lower stanines tend to date/marry members of their own stanine with extremely high levels of exclusivity, whereas persons in the middle stanines interact with relative fluidity. attractiveness is, of course, not the only predictor of dating/marriage options; however, other things such as personality, interests, skills, or wealth tend to have a much stronger effect within the three previously delineated attractiveness groups than between them.

that being said, it is the people in the 2nd and 8th stanines, who are those most likely to cross over these barriers between groups, who create the most interesting situations, and possibly also the most frustrating. but this is getting long, so i'll let you imagine up some examples for yourself.

*stanine: one of the steps in a nine-point scale of standard scores. similar to quartiles, but sets the mean/median as the center of a step rather than a division between steps; the odd number of steps draws from the premise of the famililar Likert scale (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, etc.) that only with an odd number of steps can there be a true middle, or neutral, category. the common 1-10 scale has no true center. most assume a 5, but this is a fallicy since there are six steps above it, but only four below.