Type I and Type II Error

In statistical hypothesis testing – don’t worry, it will get more interesting – there are two types of error: type I and type II.

Type I:

• The rejection of a true null hypothesis
• In simpler terms: a false positive
• In even simpler terms: acting when you shouldn’t have. An error of commission.

Type II:

• Non-rejection of a false null hypothesis
• A false negative
• Not acting when you should have. An error of omission.

When you’re picking your sets you are always running the risk of making an error. In fact, if you could minimise these risks, your approach to lay ratio would be insane. That’s because you would only approach where the girl actually likes you.

For every approach the null hypothesis can be:

This girl will like me.

Success will come if you test the hypothesis and do not experience type I error. That is, you do not experience a false positive. In these cases you think she’ll like you and does. If type I error was present then you’d think she’d like you but doesn’t. How many times have you thought you got an IOI, or approached a girl who looks just right for Daygaming and subsequently get blown out?

Then there’s the case where your hypothesis can be:

This girl probably won’t like me, she’ll probably hate my approach because she’s walking fast, looks mean, doesn’t look amenable to Daygame, etc.

Success will come if you test this hypothesis (maybe she’s extra hot or something) and do not experience type II error. This one is slightly harder to get your head around. If type II error is to not reject a false null hypothesis then to avoid type II error you have to correctly reject a false null hypothesis. If the null hypothesis is that she won’t like you, and it’s false, it means she does like you, and you should reject it. We got there eventually. In real life that would mean approaching said girl but finding her perfectly amenable to Daygame. That would mean approaching (testing the hypothesis) and correctly rejecting the hypothesis (that she doesn’t like you).

In this case, experiencing type II error would mean not approaching said girl because she didn’t look amenable, whereas in reality she would have been up for it. The problem is you just don’t know that. More on that to come.

An advanced Daygamer minimises type I error, though doesn’t eliminate it, and lives with type II error.

Let’s start with type II error because we can quickly push it aside. Given that you think the girl won’t like you, why would you approach? We’re beyond the stage of merely approaching attractive girls for the sake of only being attractive or to simply rack up the sets. And so we’d only approach a girl if we think it will go badly because she’s extra hot or some other kind of special reason. When a guy approaches for whatever that reason is, he’s living with the possibility of type II error. In that case he’s acting as if the hypothesis wasn’t true (that she would actually like him).

The reason why we can push this aside is that guys will only approach girls they think won’t like them for a special reason and they outsource the decision making to that reason. They have rules like “I always approach eights” which is a fine rule in a place like London.

Now onto type I error: false positives. Approaching when you shouldn’t have. You thought the girl would like you but she doesn’t. How odd.

There’s also the case where you think a girl will like you but you don’t approach. You act as if the girl won’t like you. This means incorrectly rejecting the hypothesis that she likes you. But why would any non-beginner Daygamer do that? It’s not like he’s got AA anymore. I think we can push this case aside.

Over time a Daygamer will naturally minimise type I error. That is, he minimises false positives. For every set and session he does his calibration is growing to a point where he emotionally feels which girls will like him and approaches them. He feels the set coming towards him almost as much as he sees it and is moving with such conviction it would need a brick wall to stop him. In contrast he’ll see a girl who he would have approached in the past, but now he just feels no kind of inclination from her to be approached. This is the stage of unconscious competence and is earned by doing all those sets as a beginner and intermediate where he learned who would and wouldn’t like him and in what circumstances. It’s the movement from predominantly cold approaching to predominantly warm approaching.

Though, an advanced Daygamer shouldn’t aim to entirely eliminate type I error only because the cost of approaching is so low and his Inner Game is very resilient. What’s the harm in doing a set on a girl who might just be up for it. You’re better off doing 10 sets on nine Yes girls and one who you’re not so sure about compared to just the nine sets on the Yes girls. It’s up to you to draw the line on what you’re willing to accept when it comes to the risk of type I error. What percentage chance do you require to approach?

This is where I see the most gains coming from for a guy to improve his approach to lay ratio. Improving his SMV and Game will improve his ratio, of course, but not by the sheer number that minimising his type I error will. To cut a long story short: I believe the most impactful way for a guy to improve his approach to lay ratio is to not do the sets he shouldn’t do.

Improving your SMV and Game will open up more Yes and Maybe girls to you – your ping range is wider – and you’ll be able to convert more of them to lays, but it pales in comparison to the effect you’ll see from cutting out the No girls from your approaches. Whereas in 2017 I might have done ten approaches over three hours, now I do ten approaches over three days. My approach to lay may not be three times as good, I still experience false positives and if I see a very hot girl I’ll do the approach and take the blow out on the chin, but it is much better.

There’s also a knock-on effect for your vibe. For a long time I’ve said that I enjoy the Daygame sessions most where I made all the right decisions. I only approached when I felt it was on in some way – even if it was small – and for a “special reason.” And now there’s a phrase for it: I minimised type I error. I minimised the false positives. I thought that the right girls were into me and the others were not. It’s taken 1000 words of mindwank to get there but we finally did it.

There’s also the case of Jaunting where you do a lot more sets than you would normally. In this case you’re opening yourself up to type I error. You’re acting as if more girls like you than actually do: you’re approaching more. At those times you mentally accept the higher chance of error because you have the more pressing fact that you need to make something happen right now.

Then there’s the days of great vibe. On those days you feel immune to type I and II error because the vibe gives you amazing resilience.

But I don’t want to end the post there because I want to talk about this one point: why do we care about our approach to lay ratios? It’s a readily comparable quantitative stat but it has little nuance.

What’s the point in comparing two guy’s ratios if they do not live in the same location and are not identical twins? It’s not like the guys are both approaching the same girls and taking turns either.

What about measuring lays against other metrics? Time spent to get the lay. Steps to lay. Heck, even calories burned to get the lay.

The only use for approach to lay ratios is to compare yourself over time. Since most guys Game in the same area for years at a time you can compare yourself year to year and see if you’ve improved. And even then, you can’t be 100% sure what led to the improvement.

When I say my approach to lay ratio improved over the years I can only speculate that it came from not approaching the No girls and from improving my SMV and Game. What if I was just luckier than last time? This is a wider question in Game: what led to my success? We can’t honestly know. All we can do is look at the averages and speculate. Did I get a better ratio because I did good Game, or merely because I did not do bad Game? We have no counterfactual – no alternate reality – in which to test our hypothesis and see what would have happened if we kept all but one thing constant.

And what does improving one’s approach to lay ratio actually mean? Does it simply mean I got rejected less? If I’m advanced and rejection apparently just rolls off of my back then why do I work to avoid rejection? Put simply: rejection will always hurt, though it will hurt less than it used to. The key is to find the optimal level of rejection where you’re balancing your vibe along with results which make you happy with Game.

Quantitative methods will only get you so far. At the end of the day you have to focus on quality of experience: has Game improved the quality of your life?

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown

 

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