I *hate* yams

Yesterday was one of those days where the most common phrase to run through my head was, "Aw, crap."

On Sunday, I had finally achieved the critical mass of moxie to ask this girl on a date, and she actually said yes. But apparently, that was only because I had caught her off guard and she panicked. She followed up with an email yesterday to make it abundantly clear that she thinks I'm an idiot. Reading the thing kinda gave me the same feeling that you get when you're driving, and you look in the mirror and see cherries flashing, and you know it's because of something you did. Except maybe multiplied like 20 times.

The real problem here isn't so much that this particular endeavor didn't pan out. The problem is that I'm 0 for my last 5 in engineering *relationships*. It begs the question, "What the hell is wrong with me? How did I become a real-life Charlie Brown?"

Some thoughts:
If I were a subatomic particle, I'd be a rejectron.
If I were a fruit, I'd be a rejectarine.
If I were a shape, I'd be a rejectangle.
If I were a flavor of Hi-C, I'd be rejecto cooler.
If I put both ports of a nine-volt battery on my tongue, I'd probably wish that I hadn't.

Okay, now for some adventures in statistics, such that I'm kind of studying for finals while I'm comlaining to cyberspace. Let's assume that if I ask a girl on a date, the probability of her actually going on the date with me is 10%. What is the probability that if I ask five girls out, none of them will say yes?

This is a classic binomial problem, with parameters p= 0.1 and n=5, and x= 0 sucesses. So, the probablity that this occurs is:
(n!/(x!*(n-x)!)* p^x * (1-p)^(n-x)
Which becomes : 5!/(0!*5!)*(0.1)^0*(0.9)^5 = 0.59, or 59% of the time.

So, that fact that I'm disappointed means that somewhere inside, I think that my chances should be greater than 10% when I ask a girl out, becuase that particular outcome of zero takers in five tries will occur more than half the time.

So maybe lets estimate a little higher, saying that my chances are 20%. How many times should I expect to get turned down again before I actually hit pay dirt?

This is will follow a geometric distribution, which has a "memoryless" property. Thus, the expected number of attempts needed is E(X)= 1/p = 1/0.2 = 5. Which fits with the theme of today (Aw, crap!) pretty well.

The very confused optimist inside of me keeps trying to point out that there could be something else going on, though. Like maybe I have some sort of mental power that turns normally intelligent girls into total dumbasses who make terrible decisions when I attempt to date them.
Or perhaps there's some way that I can consciously locate and dispose of THE STUPIDEST SELECTION CRITERION EVER, which is only trying for girls who are going to deny me.

We all know that they say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But what about when life gives you diarrhea? At that point, you should just leave life's little present alone. Don't do anything with it, and don't even think the word "smoothie". So, is this the first case or the second? I've been trying to think of some positives, which would imply that the first is correct. Here's what I have so far:

-I don't have to clean my car out anymore
-I don't have to pay for a date with money that came from a student loan
-I don't have to shave until Christmas
-I have one less stupid present to buy
-Denial helps me study

Which is what I should be doing now. Alrighty then. Next entry from Texas! Woohoo, or something.