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Yes, it seems there’s a formula to explain everything nowadays — including why we sometimes give people we wouldn’t normally be attracted to our phone number in bars. (And, for that matter, why we get as many numbers as we do — flossers that we are.) Now, we know what you’re going to say: you don’t need math to explain that; it’s the beer, silly! And you’d be right, but there’s more to it than that. Check it out:
Researchers at Manchester University credit the light level of the bar or club in question, the distance between two people, the drinker’s eyesight and the smokiness of the room as additional factors, and when they combine all those measurements with the amount of beer a subject has consumed, they can calculate how much the “beer goggles” effect is skewing one’s judgment. The formula can work out a final score, ranging from less than one – where there is no beer goggle effect – to more than 100. A rating between 1 and 50 would mean you’re likely to find someone you’re not attracted to less, shall we say, visually offensive than in other situations. If you’re scoring between 51 and 100, it might be time to call it a night; unappealing people are looking very good to you. In case you want to test it out this Friday night, here’s the formula, and its key:
- An = number of units of alcohol consumed
- S = smokiness of the room (graded from 0-10, where 0 clear air; 10 extremely smoky)
- L = luminance of ‘person of interest’ (candelas per square meter; typically 1 pitch black; 150 as seen in normal room lighting)
- Vo = Snellen visual acuity (6/6 normal; 6/12 just meets driving standard)
- d = distance from ‘person of interest’ (meters; 0.5 to 3 meters)
Comments (8)
Comment
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So when describing her the next morning do you say…
” but she had a great personality”
You might have had Beer Goggles on.
posted by Croptilldawn on 2-8-2007 at 10:29 am
smokiness in bars? i haven’t seen smoke in a bar in over two years…try making another excuse.
posted by dave on 10-27-2007 at 10:31 am
I’ve found it’s easier if i just keep the goggles on
posted by blake on 10-27-2007 at 7:57 pm
the math must have certian limitations becuase evven the ugliest drunkest girls stay away from me
posted by bill on 10-27-2007 at 11:18 pm
how about the “time passed since you’ve last had sex” variable? I would think that needs to be taken into consideration
posted by Chris on 10-28-2007 at 7:28 pm
LMAO Blake…you speak the truth my good man.
and Dave…you are still allowed to smoke in bars in some states.
posted by Tom on 10-29-2007 at 5:44 am
Chris is exactly right, this equation is missing the hornyness variable. Because really that’s what’s driving the intent behind the beer goggles and should control the entire equation. I would recommend making it an external factor to the equation such as phi and assume the goal is sex once a month and the variable “t” is the number of days until you last had sex. Then quite simply phi=2t/30. So the overall effect of beer goggles is phi*Beta.
posted by Josh on 10-30-2007 at 10:49 am
unfortunately, THIS STUDY WAS A BUNCH OF SHIT and my beloved mentalfloss has been sullied by this reprinting of a myth.
go google “beer goggles science punk” and find that a blogger found the same thing i did: this study never took place, it was an advertising effort of bausch & laum and BBC fell for it.
i’d include the link but this site won’t let me.
i was taking a course where i had to critque a research study a few years ago and tried to find the original publication of this study. no luck. i tried contacting the researcher. no luck. sure enough, after some searching, i found out the whole thing was shit and some pseudo-scientist had lent his name to this urban fucking legend.
posted by timaree on 3-6-2008 at 4:03 pm