I’ve recently learned that I’ve lived in areas with greater concentration of single men most of my life. Maybe that’s shaped the way I view dating and relationships. Somehow I would think that living in the middle of a meat market would mean I could work less at this whole dating thing. I’ve actually had a boy tell me in a sobering tone — he was planning to move to the mid-west later in life because he’d have better odds there. I was stunned. Do people really play the odds game? I thought it’d be fun to check out the stats on dating:

• 44% of the adult American population is single. That’s not bad odds. Pulling up the numbers in the US Census, there’s approximately 304,059,724 people in America. If I’m only concerned with California the number goes down to 36,756,666 x .44 = 16,172,933 x .49 (ratio of male/female) = 7,924,737. Still lookin’ good…

• 20% of women and 24.6% of men agree there is such thing as soul mates. So sad, so true and I probably fall into the greater percentage.

• 67% of U.S. single men and 86% of U.S. single women find that someone who smiles a lot is a bigger turn-on over someone who is physically attractive, but has no personality. Hello, crest white strips.

• 1 in 8: the chance a women has for a 2nd date if she has not heard from him within 24 hours of their first date. Huh. I never knew that, but I guess it’s true now that I think about it.