y = e^-x

Disclaimer: The following blag post contains both intermediate mathematics and references to my relationships with women. In fact, this blag post contains little else. Reader discretion is advised.

As the enginerd that I am, I often try to model things mathematically. Since my experience with BYU math, I haven't been as much, but I still do occasionally. Recently I've decided that I should try to model my experience with women over my life mathematically. Therefore, this post is directed mostly at my nerd friends.

Over my life, I figure that my optimism toward women is inversely proportional to my social exposure to them. I say social because, as my friend F@$$w@$$ pointed out, exposure can mean more than one thing. Anywho, as I get to know women in general better and better, my optimism toward them tends to fall. I figure that, at birth, I had a higher optimism for women than in any other context, being perfectly naïve. As my society with women increases, I feel less and less affinity for them. I figure that the decline in optimism would be sharp at first, as I was first introduced to women, and then would flatten out as the exposure to women affected me less and less. I don't honestly think that my optimism toward women would ever actually reach zero, but would come progressively closer to it.

Any curve that would be used to model my relationships with women would therefore need to be horizontally asymptotic to zero. Two equations immediately come to mind when discussing things that are horizontally asymptotic to zero:

y = 1/x OR y = e^-x

I considered y = 1/x for about 10 seconds, but upon remembering that it is also vertically asymptotic to zero quenched that thought. Since this function is vertically asymptotic to zero, it would insinuate that my optimism toward women was necessarily infinite at birth. Considering that infants are innocent in the sight of God, this is possible and even fairly likely. However, considering that neither I neither anyone I know can remember much of their condition at birth, I'll say that this assumption is unnecessary and off-base. I'd rather model my relationships with women as a percentage of the maximum possible optimism. Since y = e^-x has y-intercept of 1 this works perfectly.

So, for the function y = e^-x, the abscissa (x) would be my social exposure to women, and the ordinate (y) would be my optimism toward women as a proportion of the maximum possible. At time t=0, my exposure to women would also be zero and therefore my optimism toward them would be 1, or the maximum possible. As time progresses and my exposure to women increases and therefore my optimism toward them decreases. Naturally, there will be sometimes when my optimism toward women will be higher and some times when it will be lower, but as a general rule, there will be a downward, asymptotic trend.

So, if anyone has the need to know how my relationships with women are going, they really only need to refer to this post. As my time with and therefore my social exposure to women increases, my optimism toward women will only decrease as a general rule. If there's ever a marriage event, there will probably be another phase of the curve which will temporarily spike the curve upward, and then bring in back down to be asymptotic to zero. However, such an event would be unlikely, and the very existence of the y = e^-x relationship would almost preclude it altogether. If it did, I would need to remodel the curve, but would probably only cross that bridge when I came to it.