Our Second Date Was Statistically Abnormal
Years later, I still told the undergraduate students in my research methods class the story of my first date with Corey to help them remember the concept of regression to the mean — how something that is extreme on a first measurement will become less extreme, or regress to the mean, on a second measurement.
It’s one of the reasons we congratulate ourselves on finding a great new restaurant, recommend it to all our friends, and then find it mediocre on our second visit. Sadly, it is a statistically normal thing for an average experience to follow an exceptional one.
After Corey walked me home that first night, I was giddy with my attraction to this stranger. He had entered the bar in a beanie, hoodie and baggy jeans, and his smile revealed two missing front teeth.
A while ago, I heard on the “Hidden Brain” podcast that it takes the average 40-year-old several months to laugh as much as a child laughs in a single day. That night, Corey provided me with a child’s density of laughter, and I ran up my steps whispering, “Please don’t let this be regression to the mean.”
