From: [email-masked] (Subbarao Kambhampati)
Date: Mon, 1 Jul 91 14:14:04 PDT

Path: leland.Stanford.EDU!stanford.edu!agate!ucbvax!cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnewsh!rsd
>From: [email-masked] (rajiv.s.dighe)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: Marriages-a dynamic programming approach
Keywords: Arranged marriages, three-way ticket, etc
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
Date: 1 Jul 91 20:21:38 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 82

Looks like 'tis the season for the "arranged marriage" and the three-way
ticket debate (as every seasoned netter knows, there are only 5 actual
topics in SCI, and periodically an AI program in CMU and/or Stanford
wakes one up, and away we go).
Subbarao has his view and does not hesitate to air them.
The last time this topic came up, I had a view and did hesitate to air
it mostly because of reasons that have nothing to do with the net.
This time around I have my .02$ ready.
The scientific solution:
***********************
Actually the problem of choosing an optimal bride is a solved one.
I can even refer you to a text-book for the solution.
(See "Dynamic Programming" by Bertsekas and look at a set of 
algorithms called "Stop-&-Go" algorithms).
The basic algorithm is this:
Suppose you decide that you are going to look at N possible
spousal candidates.
One of the premise of the algorithm is that you cannot go back
on a decision, so if you said no to somebody that was it.
Further tweaking of the algorithm is possible if you remove this
constraint, but leads to mathematical intractibility.
Anywho, decide on N, decide on your criterion for choosing...
(Best legs, best earning potential, minimizing squared error
of compatibility mismatch (known to be convex and hence has a global
minimum) or whatever....)
Once we have fixed these two, take the square root of N.
These are the set of training candidates.
>From the set of training candidates, decide which is the best.
Note that the first N sup (1/2) are thus wasted, i.e., only observed
and not taken seriously.
Decide who is the best of this set and marry the first one who is
better than the best in this set.
Your probability of having chosen the best of N is about 40% for
even a modest N (say 10)...
Now, that is a pretty good choosing criterion even Rao will admit.
I mean 40% hit rate is as good as one in this dicy bizness.

Back to a more serious note:
Our society has brought us up in such a way that it is "correct"
to think about our education, about our goals and about our
careers but it is improper to think about what kind of mate one
wants in life.
Hence most of us dont have the foggiest idea of what kind of a person
one wants to spend our lives with.
We are thus extremely unprepared for the "arranged" marriage and
its consequences.
Any attempt to sensitize ourselves to our complete unpreparedness
in this area is I think good.
With age and grad school and loneliness one begins to convince
oneself that life is a compromise and that one can get along
with anybody and the choice of your lifemate is not critical.
Fool that one is, one does not realize that advanced age makes it 
more and more difficult for you to change or compromise.
So we now have two effects, loneliness & age -> 'ready for compromises"
syndrome,
while in reality age and compromises are not really easy.
And you have moved further and further away from mainsteam India.
Unfortunately all the power is in your hand and you could
very easily make or break an innocent life because of your
thoughtlessness and/or inability to change.
Furthermore it is very easy for you to start expecting the other person
to change.
I mean you are not  the one who is displaced emotionally or geographically.
Hence, I applaud Rao's attempt to sensitize the readers of the net on
the gravity of the problem.
All I can say is that there is nothing wrong with marriages-arranged
or otherwise but it is good for everybody to do some serious
introspection on what kind of life-partners they want to be with.
and yes, a lot of us will get married through the three-way ticket
mostly because there really are not that many potential life-partners
available in our day-to-day existence.
Just like you wrote down your career goals or future plans,
 spend some time on doing the same for your personal life.
Even though it sounds too clinical, introspection has some merits...
Rajiv

-- 
The Reasonable Man adjusts himself to the world, the Unreasonable One persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself; Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man.  George Bernard Shaw, "Man & Superman"
[email-masked] 908-949-5197

<someone--name deleted--email>

Rao,
	This is in reference to the current debate on USSI (previously
on SCI) about a query (sexist ??) posted on SCI by a poster.

	Should one be measured against some absolute correctness model,
against the prevailing correctness model in the society one lives, or
against the prevailing correctness model in the society one grows up ?

	I think it has to be a combination of the last two. I remember a
story about one of the Indian students here who was being interviewed by
those people from Maryland English Institute (MEI) as part of the English
test that one has to clear for becoming a TA. He was asked what all other
members in his family do. He said that his mother was housewife, a term
all of us have used, without realizing what it means. (I still don't quite
understand what is wrong with the term, it is just that this society has
given negative connotation to it.) The interviewer was almost violent in
her protest to the usage, and this guy, fresh off the boat, had no clue
regarding what hit him. He learnt that day that it is politically correct
to use "homemaker" while talking to western audience.

	It is, of course, important to point out to people that the model
of correctness they have grown up with has serious flaws, that it is based
on inequality, sexism, etc. But being harsh to someone who is most probably
naive, and does not realize that he is making a mistake, is not quite right.
If a person has been raised all his life to refer to women as girls, one
must try to pursuade, as gently as possible, that calling adult women
"girls" show that he does not consider them mature and all that.

	I am sure that this will lead to the effectiveness argument. Your
style on SCI has been quite effective in the masses (though it may not have
been popular with Atri Indiresan, Arun Gupta, Sunil Arya and others). But,
should you be only concerned with the goals, and not at all with the means.
Should one be made scapegoat so that people on the sidelines can learn? 
I think there has to be a balance between effectiveness and fairness, and
in my opinion, you too often draw a line too close to effectiveness, in
almost complete disregard to fairness.

	I am not trying to suggest that there was nothing wrong with the
original posting that started the whole thread. It definitely had the
intonations of sexism in it. But looking at just that posting, I don't
think he deserved the response he got from you. Of course, his refusal
to see your view-point, and continually insisting that there was nothing
wrong in it, vindicate your presumptions, but the fact remains that you
were being presumptuous to begin with.