STANFORD UNIVERSITY



STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Faculty of Engineering

Department of Management Science and Engineering

Fall 2008

MS&E 220 – Probabilistic Analysis

Class Project

____________________________________

Submitted To:

Professor Samuel S Chiu

Submitted By:

|Megan Hansen |mvhansen@stanford.edu |

|Tien-Tien Chan |jtchan@stanford.edu |

|Emily Hilton |ehilton@stanford.edu |

|Ming Chen |chenm18@stanford.edu |

Executive Summary

When two people start dating, they might start asking themselves, “What are my chances of finding someone better?” or “Is this the one I want to settle with?” If they can’t answer these questions, probabilistic analysis can! The purpose of this report is to explain the mathematical model developed to conduct a probabilistic analysis to figure out the time it would take a user to meet someone better than the person they are currently dating or last dated. We do this by iteratively finding how long it will take someone to meet a person better than the one they are with given a set of parameters, such as how frequently they meet people and what their preferences are. We then perform sensitivity analyses to give a recommendation in order to shorten this period. We focus the model for someone living in the San Francisco Bay Area, though people of all genders, ages, and sexual orientations can use the model.

This document was written for an audience possessing basic knowledge of dating, distribution, utility function and sensitivity analysis. Microsoft Excel was the primary tool used to formulate and solve the models.

Major points covered in this report include discussions of the basic inputs of the model, formulation process of the model, data collection and analysis, sensitivities analysis to changes in inputs, and the final recommendations.

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