Delusion Calculator

What the delusion calculator does

The delusion calculator is a dating standards calculator. You enter the things you want in a partner, such as an age range, a minimum height, a minimum income, body type, education and whether they smoke. It then estimates what percentage of adults of that gender meet every one of those standards at the same time, how many people that is, and how selective that makes you on a scale from 1 to 10.

Most people only think about one standard at a time. "Over six foot" sounds normal, and so does "earns six figures". The surprise comes when you combine them, because each filter removes people from what is left after the last one.

Female delusion calculator: checking standards for men

Set I am to Female and Looking for to Men. The filters women most often use are height, income and age. Roughly 15% of adult men in the US are six foot or taller, and about 17% earn $100,000 or more a year. Put those two together with an age range and "not married" and the pool can drop below 1%. The female delusion calculator page opens with these settings ready.

Male delusion calculator: checking standards for women

Set I am to Male and Looking for to Women. Men tend to filter on age, body type and height. In the US about 42% of adults have a BMI of 30 or more, and only around a third of women are in the healthy BMI range, so "slim" is a much bigger filter than it feels. The male delusion calculator page opens with these settings ready.

Where the numbers come from

• Age and marital status: national census population estimates by age and sex.
• Height: national health examination surveys (average and spread of adult height by sex).
• Income: individual annual income distributions from census income surveys.
• Body type: adult obesity and healthy-weight rates from national health surveys.
• Education, children, smoking and exercise: national education, household and health statistics.

Filters are treated as independent of each other, apart from marital status and children, which are matched by age. In real life some traits go together (for example height and income are slightly linked), so treat your result as a ballpark estimate.

What your delusion score means

How to use the standards calculator well

After you get your result, look at the What shrinks your pool list. It shows how many people pass each filter on its own. Relaxing the filter at the top usually grows your pool more than dropping two or three smaller ones. It is also worth running the calculator on yourself: set the filters to match your own height, income and lifestyle and see how many people you would pass.