Frog Kiss

A “Near Miss Frog Kiss” is defined as coming close to making a choice that would have been wrong for you. It's based on the old saying, “You have to kiss a lot of.
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Frog 1 hopped out of the pond with the number 2 on its back. The princess kicked it back into the pond. Frog 2 had the number 12 on its back. Better, but it received the same treatment from the princess. She repeated this for the first 37 frogs, and noted that the highest number she had seen so far was She then waited until she saw a frog numbered higher than Of course the frog numbered The frog disappeared in a puff of smoke to be replaced by a handsome prince, and they lived happily ever after or, if you prefer unhappy endings: There was a higher numbered frog still to come.

The princess's strategy was first to gather some information about the frogs she remembered the highest number out of the first 37 , and then choose based on this information she kissed the frog with the next highest number.


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If there were a different number of frogs, how many should she kick into the pond before looking for one worth kissing? If you haven't worked it out by now, I've been talking about partner choice. How many people should you date and kick back into the pond before you decide to settle down, live together and have babies kiss the frog based on how good a partner you think they'll make the number on their back? I've been describing a simple mathematical model for this important, life-changing decision. If you've never done any mathematical modelling, here's how it works:.

We can pass over 6a quickly, as there are so many things missing from our mathematical model that it's hard to know where to begin patching it up! Now for step 6b.

Kissing the frog: A mathematician's guide to mating | leondumoulin.nl

I'm told that when men meet women, they sometimes rate each other on a scale of 1 to Of course, mathematicians are far too intelligent and sophisticated do this. We rate people on a scale of 0 to 1. In our original mathematical model, all we could do was compare one possible frog with another. The numbers didn't mean anything in themselves; they just told the princess whether one frog was "better" than another.

Let's change the fairytale slightly so that the frogs are now labelled with numbers drawn randomly from those that lie between 0 and 1, with the handsome prince having the highest number. What's the princess's best strategy now? Well, the princess now has much more information to use. There is a highest and a lowest number 0 and 1 , and the frogs' numbers are uniformly, but randomly, distributed between the two. If the first frog to hop out is numbered, for example, 0.

What if the first frog is numbered 0. Is that good enough to kiss? It turns out that the best strategy is, as anyone aged over 25 knows, to start with high standards, and then lower them as the frogs keep on coming. We're meant to be doing some maths here, so by "standards" I mean that for each frog there is a number, called a decision number , below which the princess shouldn't kiss it here's how to calculate the decision number. If the frog is numbered above the appropriate decision number, and is the best frog so far, she should kiss it. In fact, if the first frog is numbered 0.

She's more likely to find Mr. Right by holding out for a more attractive frog. Examples of the three things that can happen are shown below. There are lots of other things that we could add to our mathematical model to make it more realistic. For example, in real life, if you kiss the second best frog, you don't have to stay in the enchanted forest.

Unless you're an incurable romantic who thinks that there's just one perfect person out there for you, you can be very happy with frog number 2. Maybe you're more interested in avoiding a very bad frog.

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What's more important, making sure you bag frog number 1 or avoiding frogs 51 to ? The strategy you should choose depends upon what you're trying to achieve. Now let's imagine that the princess, who I have so far avoided describing, has a face like a bag of spanners. When the handsome prince appears, he may take one look at her and run for his life. Partner choice is a two-way business. You must choose and be chosen. If you kiss a frog whose number is too far from yours, disaster is probably just around the corner.


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And how do you know what your number is anyway? You may think you know, but it's not what you think that matters. It's only by finding out who will agree to date you that you start to get some idea of what your number is. All of these features can be, and have been, added to mathematical models. One of the great things about maths is that it has so many different uses.

In fact, the same bit of maths can have lots of different applications, and the fairytale of the frog prince is an example of this.

Kissing a frog might get you more than a prince

Let me retell the fairytale one last time. In this version, the princess's three brothers have been turned into frogs and thrown into the pond. When the princess whose name was Anika came along, tossing her famous golden ball in the air, and dropped her ball into the bog that Heinrich called home, Heinrich saw it as his golden opportunity to take advantage of Anika. He offered to retrieve her golden ball from the pond, if she'd stay at the castle.

His plan was mooch off Anika and her father the king, while all the while staying warm, moist and comfortable in the royal palace. Anika agreed, but she could only put up with Heinrich's selfish, greedy ways for so long. When he wanted her to allow his slimy carcass to sleep on her pillow and kiss him , Anika got disgusted and threw Heinrich face-first into a stone wall.

That would have killed an ordinary frog.

The Frog Prince

But in Heinrich's case, it made him wake up and smell the bogwater. He realized he'd been an awful jerk, and turned back into a prince. Anika, however, chose not to forgive Heinrich's thoughtlessness. She and the prince did not get married, and they certainly never lived happily ever after. In fact, after that incident, whenever Anika and Heinrich crossed paths, she was polite but distant to him. He accepted that he was never going to get anywhere with her romantically, though in his later years, he did become rather bitter about the lack of a closer relationship.

He's said to have circulated rumors that the princess was born with webbed toes, which were later corrected through surgery. In fact, webbed toes ran in Heinrich's family, though he himself did not inherit the gene.

Svanprinsessan The frog kiss

I feel all girls and women have been cheated of the original story where the message is so fundamentally different from the mainstream version of the story. There is no evil witch here, but a woman who has practically put a restraining order on an abusive prince by bewitching him into a frog when he did not stop his verbal abuse of her.

Similarly, the princess who tolerated the frog's attempts at taking advantage of her for a little while stopped the process by throwing him off the wall instead of kissing him. In other words, she did exactly the opposite of what girls and women have been told all of our lives: She did not listen to her father's expectation for her to fulfill a promise from someone who is obviously taking advantage of her and she definitely was not a "nice girl" by the traditional definition of a "nice girl. The beauty of the second version of the story is that it is through the princess's boundary-setting around his violation of her space throwing him and not tolerating and rewarding his violation the kiss that acted as the wake-up call for him.

Her claiming her power and owning her voice even when she was disgusted and angry at him is the very thing that he needed to wake up and realize his violation of the women he encountered -- both the witch and the princess. When girls and women do that in real life, we are called "mean," "cruel" and even "bitches. Well girls, here is the deal: The truth is we can only stay true to ourselves as girls and women Being "a good girl," as I see it in the original story, is being a girl that knows how to create boundaries and stop violations and abuse.

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It is being a girl who is not afraid of showing her true feelings. A good girl is a free girl, who can be herself in her truth and in her freedom so she may be her own protector and the master of her own destiny. We all want a "good prince" in our lives. Although it is vitally important to remember that a good prince does not manipulate, nor violate, and definitely does not require the princess to perform an unreasonable act, such as kissing a frog.