A dear friend, looking for a worthy mate, when challenged to be more quantitative came up with parameters to rate spousal candidates:
- Intellect
- Love of children
- Sensitivity
- Affection
- Spirituality
- Confidence
- Altruism
- Financial stability
- Education
- Interest in world events
- "Chemistry"
- Humor
- Physical activity
- Chivalry
Some of these dimensions overlap, some are clearly correlated, and some are more or less important. One could apply numerical weights to each, but that's arguably an unnecessary degree of false precision. They're listed in rough priority order in the friend's current thinking, more valued ones first.
Challenge: define a scale along which to measure each. A simple binary "Yes/No"? Or "Low/Medium/High"? Linear numeric, maybe 1-5 or 0-100?
Perhaps better, an open-ended logarithmic rank, as per ClassyPeople:
- "Class 0" are the norm, nice enough
- "Class 1" are the top 10%, who earn at least an A
- "Class 2", the top 1%, are rather outstanding
- ...
- "Class N", one in 10N
It's an open-ended approach, simple and fun to apply. Of course there are only a handful of Class 9+ folk on the planet at any given time in any given category. But isn't that what one wants (or wants to believe one has found) in a soul-mate for eternity?
More to follow, perhaps, on schemes to organize these and other parameters, and ideas for combining their values to produce an overall score.
(cf. ClassyPeople (2000-04-01), CheckMate1 (2001-11-26), CheckMate2 (2001-11-30), ...) - ^z - 2014-05-15