Tim Harford: a columnist with the Financial Times and also the best-selling author of The Undercover Economist, The Logic of Life and now the Dear Undercover Economist
I stopped wearing socks because I used to keep losing one part of the pair. Why do socks disappear?
Socks disappear. So forget the socks. The problem is when you lose a sock, you basically lose two socks, because they are matching pairs. We need to look at the Industrial Revolution here. One of the main advantages of the Industrial Revolution was something called interchangeable parts. So when a part of the machine breaks down you throw out the broken part, you slot in the new part and the machine starts working again. You don't have to throw away the whole machine. So you need to apply the theory of interchangeable parts to your socks. And make sure all your socks are the same. So if you lose one sock, fine you lose one sock, but you haven't got all this problem of matching odd socks. And when you lose a sock, you only lose one sock, and you don't lose a pair of socks. So that is my advice. You need to just go out there and buy two dozen pairs of identical black socks. And look (points towards his identical black socks). In my suitcase, there are four more identical black socks. At home I have another twenty identical black socks. Every now on then I go and buy more socks from the same shop. I am frightened that one day they will stop making these socks. But, so far, so good.
I am looking for 'the one'. Is she out there?
I will answer this question using my favorite piece of economics research, which is about speed dating. In a speed date, you have got maybe 20 men, 20 women, 20 tables, 20 candles, 20 large glasses of beer and 20 large glasses of wine, because everyone's going to need a drink.
Each man meets a woman for three minutes. They talk to the women for three minutes, which, of course, is a mistake. They should be listening. But they talk. At the end of the date, they move on and they talk to other women. You get to meet everybody at a speed date. Now, a couple of economists — Michele Belot and Marco Franscesconi — have got hold of data on thousands and thousands of speed dates. And also questionnaires that people filled in about their height, weight, income, education etc. All information that we have never had in the past. And we found a lot of fun stuff. Women like tall, rich, well-educated men. Men like slim, educated women who do not smoke. These things were not surprises.
So what were?
One thing that is a surprise is that on a speed date, where all the guys are attractive or rich, you might think that a women might propose more dates because more people meet her standards. That isn't what happens. What happens is that the woman immediately raises her standards, thinking, "Hey I never realised that the speed dating market was so great!" She raises her standards, and proposes very few dates. Conversely, a speed dating evening where all the guys are short, and they were all smokers, not educated, not rich, you might expect that the woman might not propose any date. But instead, the Bridget Jones part of the brain kicks in. She thinks, "I never realised that the dating market was so tough. I have got to propose some dates." And so she lowers her standards.
I know that what I am saying sounds very sexist. But men acted exactly the same way. They raised or lowered their standards depending on the attractiveness of the pool in front.
So what does that mean for the question you have asked? It means that anybody can be 'the one', you just have to compare them with the right people. This is because we don't have fixed standards, that there is this one person, who is the right person for us. Basically, we are moving our standards up and down all the time depending on what is available.
By the way, if you are ever going on a speed date, make sure you take short, ugly friends with you. It's going to increase your chances.
How do I get hold of the shortest queue in the supermarket?
What I suggest is that unless you have the time to really specialist in studying supermarket queues and trying to be smarter than someone else, just get into the queue and don't worry. And, by the way, probably it won't be the fastest one, because you have one queue on this side, one queue on that side, so two to one, you will have a queue next to you that is faster. But that's life. Sometimes we economists have to take a Zen attitude and that's one of those times.
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