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From: jon@boulder.UUCP (Jonathan Corbet)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Opening line statistics
Message-ID: <396@boulder.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 17-Aug-85 20:31:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: boulder.396
Posted: Sat Aug 17 20:31:39 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Aug-85 04:45:26 EDT
Reply-To: jon@boulder.UUCP (Jon Corbet)
Organization: National Center for Atmospheric Research
Lines: 33

[ I thought some of you net.singles might get a kick out of this...]

	The information contained herein is pulled from the September issue
of _Harper's_; they in turn grabbed it from "The Language of Singles Bars" by
Thomas Murray, in the Spring issue of _American_Speach_.  Therein, Murray
summarizes his research into opening lines used in singles bars (what a
fascinating subject to get paid to study..why didn't I think of that?).  The
total sample space is about 3000 opening lines, which he (somewhat arbitrarily,
I think) divided up into categories.  The results are neatly presented in this
table:

		Type or	| 8:00-	| 9:00-	| 10:00-| 11:00-| 12:00-
		Function| 9:00	| 10:00	| 11:00 | 12:00	|  1:00
	  --------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
	  Compliments	|  11	|  14	|  51	| 127	| 240
	  Advertisements|	|	|	|	|
	  / Declarations| 136	| 151	| 211	| 214	| 256
	  Questions	| 207	| 214	| 302	| 329	| 373
	  Conversational| 273	| 240	| 127	| 123	| 195
	  Propositions	|  81	| 139	| 437	| 547	| 674

	The author states that compliments (1) were the least popular form
of opening, and (2) they are generally a sign of desperation, which (I guess)
explains the exponential increase in their use as the evening wears on...

	Unfortunately, he did no analysis on the success rate of each type
of opening line :-).

jon
-- 
Jonathan Corbet
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Field Observing Facility
{seismo|hplabs}!hao!boulder!jon		(Thanks to CU CS department)