Why Do We Calculate Approach to Lay Ratios: Thinking About Stats and Holding Contradictory Views

Here is a recent tweet thread where we went off on a bit of a tangent on A:L:

The thread brought up a good point: A:L is meaningful for some people and not for others. I started to think, why count A:L? Why count stats at all? Should we count something else if anything?

There are some common problems with counting your Daygame stats:

• You can become overly numbers focused
• The stats themselves can be gamed
• You can get stuck in your head thinking about abstract things rather than being present and focusing on what really matters: the girls
• Keeping stats might lead you to play it safe to maintain good ratios

But that seems counter to what I said in this post on common Daygame ratios and how to improve them. In that post I was encouraging guys to keep stats and use them as a primary means for improvement.

The problem is, like a lot of things in Game and with the Red Pill, that you have to hold two contradictory views at the same time. On one hand you have:

Stats are great

Measure everything

You don’t know if you’re improving without quantifying

vs

Stats are meaningless

Stats are abstract

You’re detracting from real life experience

To take full advantage of keeping stats you have to care about them and use them as a guide for improvement whilst also not caring about them.

Onto A:L. It’s considered to be the gold standard for Daygame skill but why do we care so much about this ratio? Let’s look at what an improving A:L ratio can even tell us by looking at this joke/anecdote:

A philosopher, a physicist and a mathematician were travelling through Scotland when they saw a black sheep through the window of the train.

“Aha,” says the philosopher, “I see that Scottish sheep are black.”

“Hmm,” says the physicist, “You mean that some Scottish sheep are black.”

“No,” says the mathematician, “All we know is that there is at least one sheep in Scotland, and that at least one side of that one sheep is black!”

The lesson here is that when we’re looking at stats we have to be painfully literal. Again there’s that contradiction: imbue stats with meaning and take their lead for areas to improve on, but also know that each ratio only tells us a very limited set of information.

In the specific case of A:L we can only say a couple of things for sure: we were rejected less in one way or another before we got laid; and that a higher proportion of our approaches led to lays.

However it confirms nothing for:

• Skill
• Luck
• Quality
• Your SMV
• The point at which rejection occurred
• Time, effort and energy spent
• Enjoyment

In fact I think the quickest and best way to improve one’s A:L is simply to do less sets. Get rejected less. Perhaps that would show an improvement in a particular skill – not approaching the No girls – but it doesn’t confirm it. And what if it took you twice as long to get to each lay? What’s better: spending 20 hours approaching 100 girls to get one lay or spending 40 hours approaching 50 girls to get one lay?

This is why, in my tweet, I said that the most important thing is to do what makes you happy, with some consideration for other Daygamers not to spam and burn one particular area. It helps to think of the Daygame area like a field, in this case, which needs to be tended to.

When people talk about their approach and their method, myself included, we can make it sound like ours is the only way. In reality we only speak like this because for us it’s the only way as it’s the best way for us. So when we talk it comes with full conviction that it is objectively the best way to do things. This is another reason why it’s vital to ask yourself if you’re happy or not.

So what are the alternatives then? We can ask ourselves a binary question: “does what I’m doing/achieving make me happy?” The problem is that community dick waving is going to require some sort of metric which is easily compared. And it is very hard to avoid competition when you think you’ll do well.

In my previous post’s comment section (linked above) there was a lot of discussion over counting dates:lay. That is a great metric because this is where the girl sees the real you.

In another previous post (can’t remember which one unfortunately) I recommended counting A:L for girls who are equal to or above your long run SMV, which would control for quality and the guy’s SMV.

Then there is – jokes aside – energy based measurements such as time spent Daygaming and on dates, or even steps, to lay.

But at the end of the day I expect most people to continue measuring A:L. It’s easily measured and the norm for the community.

Stats is the primary means for comparison in the community. And I’m not innocent either. I post my stats because I want people to see how I’m doing and how I did, even though I accept that on their own there’s not much you can say about them. They lend me authority as well, which is important if you want to grow a business. But I’ll return to my point: like a lot of things in Game you have to hold two contradicting views at once. The most important question to ask yourself is “is this making me happy?”

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown

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