SWF wltm LGM (little green man)
Happy Valentine's! If you are single and looking for love have you thought about widening your search to include alien lifeforms? According to the numbers the chance of finding the perfect partner is only hundred times greater than the chance of mankind successfully making contact with ET.
Why not kill two birds with one numerical stone and broaden out the search? Hey, a statistical edge is a statistical edge!
You might think research into girlfriends and boyfriends has little to do with the search for extra-terrestrial life, but you'd be wrong. You can apply the same formula to both situations and work out the odds.
That's what University of Warwick economist did with the aid of the which is usually used to estimate the chances of us making contact with intelligent aliens. Peter retooled it to work out the chances of him finding a girlfriend.
The good news is that two years on The Telegraph Peter has found his perfect lady and having had a quick chat with him I can report he didn't use any formulas to find her.
Of course what's really interesting about The Drake Equation is the potentially huge range of answers it can give you. Because we have no idea what numbers to give to all the variables in it. Even when you apply it to the more familiar area of human romantic interactions there's still plenty of educated guesswork.
But in the end that's the point, the original aim of the Drake Equation was to trigger discussion about the chances of finding intelligent alien life and not to provide a single correct answer.
And hey if you end up discussing it with a like minded individual you may well find love and then further refine the variables in the Peter Backus Equation yourself.
You can find Peter's full paper .
I'm David Gregory, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Science Correspondent for the West Midlands. My first law states: "Science is the answer." There is no second law. Feel free to drop me a line: 
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