Dating for Engineers

Week 1 — Course Overview

The model is not advice

It will not tell you what to do about a specific person tonight.

It will tell you what variable you’re actually uncertain about.

Two questions, same situation

  • “Do they like me?” — first-person, no stable answer
  • “What’s the current information asymmetry between these two parties?” — systems question, has a method

This course only asks the second kind.

Why finance, why game theory

  • attraction, dependency, and commitment are treated as priced positions, not feelings to be resolved
  • the same tools that price risk under incomplete information work here, because the uncertainty is the same kind
  • the payoff: an anxiety-inducing, reactive domain becomes something you can actually plan against

One variable per week

WeeksVariable
2–3attraction, reliability
4–5dependency, specificity
6–7reciprocity, commitment
8–9situationship failure modes, contract design
10–11monitoring, risk
12synthesis

What a case review is

  • bring a real or composite situation — never someone’s private details without their consent
  • leave with a clearer statement of the situation, not a verdict
  • the model gets applied to the same case, week over week, all semester

What a case review is not

  • it is not couples counselling
  • it is not a prediction service
  • it does not replace judgement — it gives you cheaper variables to apply judgement to

A relationship is a two-party system. Each party holds information the other is pricing in. Everything else this semester is detail.

Before session 1

  • pick a situation: yours, a friend’s (with care), or a plausible composite
  • write it in two sentences, without naming anyone
  • state what “success” would look like in terms a stranger could check