Geek Logik – a mini review

Even though this book hit the shelves more than two years ago it still ranks highly amongst geeks nationwide. It received wide press coverage at the time and has been featured by Good Morning America, Fox and Friends, the BBC program Horizon and also in Esquire, Wired, Maxim and by fellow blogger John Tierney in the NY Times. 

Enough ranking keywords spilled, let’s have a look of what awaits you inside this little self-help book.

Geek Logik was written by Garth Sundem, a mathematician who’s married to a woman with a PhD in particle physics. If you think that’s not one hell of a geeky relationship then what’s yours like? 

Anyway, if two half geniuses express their love to each other it may end up in dirty equation talk. If that’s not your thing here are some real life issues even regular folk like me can relate to.

Just to remind you his book offers 50 equations, here’s just three to get you started:

What are the chances my marriage will last?

 

A= Her age at time of marriage
E=Current combined years of post-high-school education
K= Number of kids from this marriage
R= How religious is the couple (1-10 with 10 being “the Pope”)
D= Combined number of divorces of couple’s parents
P= Combined previous marriages
T= Years at which you are computing the chances

H.e.a. stands for “Happily Ever After” and is the percent chance you will still be married at time “T”

Should we get married??

T= How many years have you been dating?
L= The number of times per day that something makes you think of this person
C= If your families got together for a holiday dinner, the estimated number of times there would be uncomfortable friction
S= How many shared interests and/or goals do you two have?
A= How many individual or conflicting interests and/or goals do you two have?
D= The average number of disagreements you have with this person in a month

If Ttk is above one, you should tie the knot.

How many kids should you have?

 

S= Your combined household salary
K= Combined, how many brothers and sisters do you and your spouse have (include yourselves in this number)
T= Combined hours per week you and your significant other work outside the house
A= On a scale from 1-10, the highest level of aversion you have to any of the following: Changing diapers, sleep deprivation, visiting in-laws, tantrums
E= On a scale from 1-10, how concerned are you about global overpopulation

Kids, of course, is the number of kids that your lifestyle supports.

These equations do really work out but were never intended to be taken seriously. The author used gross stereotypes (especially on the female side) to get his humor across. So if you don’t get it, you’re probably not really geeky enough or simply a bad ass feminist.

One “funny” gimmick that comes free with the book is a tiny calculator, so you can try out your equations on the spot. That would have been a really good idea if the publishers would have included a calculator with an exponent button. Since they didn’t, this gimmick is just fracking useless. But who knows, maybe that was another hidden geek joke my mediocre educated self-image just didn’t get.