Talk:216: Romantic Drama Equation

This can't be right, even at 50/50, the number of gay pairings far outnumbers the number of straight pairings.80.235.105.134 20:10, 28 February 2013 (UTC) Moved from article page

Not quite. Consider a cast of 4 with 2 male (A, B) and 2 female (C, D). Possible gay pairings - 2 (A-B and C-D). Possible straight pairings - 4 (A-C, A-D, B-C, B-D) 122.200.61.203 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

He says for large casts. For 2000 cast members, with 1000 of each gender, the gay couplings comes out at 999,000 and straight at 1,000,000. Presumably this is the small cross over the diagram alludes to. If you substitute x = n/2 into the equations, then you get (n^2-2n)/4 for the gay combinations and n^2/4 for the straight combinations, so for gender balanced cast size of n, the straight combinations outnumber the gay by n/2 141.101.98.229 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

There is a typo in his formula for gay casts. The + should be a -. 199.27.128.159 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~) No, he's right. Notice the x-n term. x<n, so x-n is negative.108.162.215.61 03:14, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

This also the small implication that "Queer as Folk" was so dull that Randall produced this equation to occupy his mind during it. I often find my mind wandering while sat watching soaps with my other half. Drmouse (talk) 14:20, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

The first equation can also be understood more simply as the total number of possible pairings, minus the number of straight ones.