{"id":23297,"date":"2019-05-19T12:27:40","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T16:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=23297"},"modified":"2019-05-16T00:41:28","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T04:41:28","slug":"statistics-informed-approach-to-marriage-goes-awry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/19\/statistics-informed-approach-to-marriage-goes-awry\/","title":{"rendered":"Statistics-informed approach to marriage goes awry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A story of math and romance&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wmar2news.com\/matterformallory\/local-professor-says-he-lost-50-000-after-being-deceived-by-a-russian-mail-order-bride\">&#8220;Local professor says he lost $50,000 after being deceived by a Russian mail order bride&#8221;<\/a> (WMAR, Baltimore):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Dr. Jonathan Farley met his wife through a Russian online dating site. He was after true love, but he believes his wife was after a Green Card and his money. He estimates he lost close to $50,000.<\/p><p>Farley, an accomplished mathematician, looked at finding love like a statistics problem.<\/p><p>&#8220;There are 10 million more women than men in Russia,&#8221; said Farley.<\/p><p>He liked his odds, so he traveled to Siberia where he met a woman in an unconventional way.<\/p><p>The website delivered a match. She was 20, he was 42.<\/p><p>Within two weeks of getting married, Farley said his wife&#8217;s behavior completely changed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps the problem is that he didn&#8217;t work from complete data? <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Demographics_of_Russia\">Wikipedia<\/a> does not show that dramatically more 20-year-old Russians identify as female compared to the number who identify as male.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wonder if this being featured by a TV station shows Americans&#8217; fascination with Russian villains. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2017\/08\/marriage-rates-education\/536913\/\">&#8220;America, Home of the Transactional Marriage&#8221;<\/a> (<em>Atlantic<\/em>) suggests that more Americans get married for the cash than do folks in other countries (in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realworlddivorce.com\/International\">a lot of other countries<\/a>, it is almost impossible to turn a substantial profit on a past sexual relationship).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Related:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/29\/au-pair-to-green-card\/\">https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/29\/au-pair-to-green-card\/<\/a><\/li><li><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.realworlddivorce.com\/Maryland\">Real Word Divorce<\/a><\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.realworlddivorce.com\/Maryland\"> Maryland chapter<\/a> (if the good professor lost only $50,000 he is doing a lot better than the typical higher-earning spouse who goes through the Maryland family court)<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A story of math and romance&#8230; &#8220;Local professor says he lost $50,000 after being deceived by a Russian mail order bride&#8221; (WMAR, Baltimore): Dr. Jonathan Farley met his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-divorce-child-support-custody-family-law"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Statistics-informed approach to marriage goes awry - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/19\/statistics-informed-approach-to-marriage-goes-awry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Statistics-informed approach to marriage goes awry - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A story of math and romance&#8230; 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