Statistical Significance

PLA: I was at a bar last night, middle of the week, minding my own business, eating a turkey burger, and this girl I hadn't talked to for weeks txts me, wanting to hang out Saturday night. And then a few minutes later, this other girl comes up to the bar right next to me to ask the bar tender something. He didn't know the answer, but I was playing on my Blackberry, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, and then she invited me to come to her table with the other two girls she was with.

aPUA: WOAH! I didn't know you could peacock with a turkey burger.

PLA: ...

aPUA: Maybe it was the Blackberry?

PLA: ...

aPUA: What bar was this? I have to go there.

PLA: You are never getting laid.


On any Community forum you will find guys posting about a new line, routine, tactic, or whatever, either talking about how well it worked or asking if other guys think it will work. Both of these questions are dumb.

Saying your technique worked is irrelevant. There's a lot more going on in your interaction than the one technique, so it's impossible for you to say that the technique was responsible for your success. You can't even say it contributed. Your experience is statistically insignificant. A certain Community forum out there requires its members to have successfully used a technique twice before posting about it. Also statistically insignificant, largely because guys don't realize what other information they have to provide. If you want to add to the collective Community wisdom, we need to know a whole lot more than just what the line was and how many times you nailed her. We also need to know how many times you tried it and it failed. What type of venue did you use it in? What time was it? Were either of you drinking? Dancing? And here's the big one: How successful are you normally?

Imagine someone told you about a new routine called...I don't know...Sin and Thin. He says he's tried it 200 times, on 15 different nights and 40 different venues, ranging from the multi-level club to the college dive bar, and out of those 200 attempts he got laid 50 times. For those of you keeping track at home, 1 in 4 is amazingly good. 1 in 4 means you're never going home alone. You will find at least 4 attractive girls any night you go out. Sin and Thin must be some powerful shit, right?

Maybe not. What if Sin and Thin's creator normally has a 1 in 2 chance of getting the girl? Sin and Thin is actually hurting his game. It doesn't really matter whether a certain technique worked, what matters is whether it improved your game. Every successful pick up has some good moves and some bad moves. You don't want to cling to the bad moves just because you got laid after using them. You'll still get laid, but it'll be more difficult.

In most football victories the opposing team scores at least once. But, no team looks at its record and decides it would help to allow the opposing team to score. Why? Because they win even more of the time when the other doesn't score at all.

And now to briefly address the other question guys like to pose: What do you think of this line?

Look, retard, if these guys could just read a line you thought up and know whether it will get you laid, they wouldn't be on an internet forum looking for advice on how to pick up girls. They'd be out having orgies with models. We don't know what you look like, how you speak, what your body language will be, or any other number of factors that can make or break your delivery. And even if we did, the vast majority of Community members simply don't know whether something will work. That's why they're in the Community learning this stuff in the first place. Go out and test it yourself. It's a lot more fun than sitting at your keyboard.