Some golfing buddies and I were trying to decide whether to play a course close to home or a course that is $20 cheaper but an hour away. We were discussing whether the “love bank” credits with our wives for playing closer to home and thus getting home for dinner were worth the additional $20 in green fees. To provide a more empirical basis for this decision, I devised the following (admittedly sexist) formula for determining the monetary value of “love bank” credits. (Actually the formula determines the marginal value of adding additional love bank credits to an existing love bank.)
The $ value of 1 Love Bank Unit (“LBU”) =
Total Accrued LBUs * pSex (probability of sex in a given evening)
———————————————————————————————-
100
We have to calculate pSex, which =
(1/2 Banked LBUs + New LBUs) – 2(HOG (Holes of Golf played))
——————————————————————————————————-
Total Accrued LBUs
*Note: Banked LBUs are LBUs earned 10 or more days prior to date of calculation; New LBUs are LBUs earned less than 10 days prior to the calculation. Total Accrued LBUs = Banked LBUs + New LBUs. Banked LBUs are halved in the numerator because pSex is always less than 1 regardless of HOG.
Assume, then, that one has 450 Banked LBUs, 50 New LBUs and plays one round of golf. pSex then would be
275 – 2(18)
—————– = .478
500
and the $ value of one LBU would be
500 * .478
—————- = $2.39
100
If 1 LBU = $2.39, then $20 = 47.8 LBUs.
The question is then whether spending the extra $20 would increase pSex enough to justify the expenditure. Going back to the pSex formula, assuming the base of 500 Total Accrued LBUs and adding in the 47.8 extra, the new pSex would be:
(225 + 50 + 47.8) – 36
——————————- = .52
547.8
Thus, the $20 expenditure increases pSex by only approximately .04.