Quantifiable Living: Wedding party member-Social satisfaction scale

Emotion: Satisfaction (with social life)

Unit of measure: Wedding party members living within X/5 miles

How it works: Satisfaction with one’s social situation may be measured in the number of people within X-number of miles who would be chosen and welcomed into one’s ideal wedding party (as a groomsmen or bridesmaid).

Relatives who are forced into wedding parties by necessity but would not have been chosen freely do not count on this scale. (See “cultural miles-geographic dissatisfaction scale” to account for these relatives.) Relatives or other loved ones who would traditionally occupy other positions in an actual wedding ceremony (i.e., “mother of the bride”) may be imagined and included as bridesmaids or groomsmen for the purpose of this scale.

Women may choose “groomsmen” as well as “bridesmaids,” and men may choose either as well. However, the total number of people chosen as one’s ideal wedding party must not exceed seven, and 7.0 is the maximum level of social satisfaction in this scale. Zero (0.0) is the lowest possible measure.

To calculate social satisfaction levels, each person in the ideal wedding party is the equivalent of 1.00 pwpm (potential wedding party members) when living within five miles. For every five additional miles away each pwpm lives, .05 pwpm is subtracted from each wedding party member’s initial 1.00. The lower number in the range of miles distant (i.e., “fifty to fifty-five miles away” is reduced to exactly fifty miles) is the number to be multiplied by .05 and subtracted from 1.00.


Example:

You have one pwpm living eighteen miles away. How many wpm is this person?

18 miles / 5 miles = 3, R3*

3 x 0.05pwpm = 0.15

1.00 pwpm – 0.15 pwpm = 0.85 wpm**

* Remainders are inconsequential in the Wedding party-social satisfaction scale.

**Once “real numbers” are determined for each potential wedding party member, units of measure change from pwpm to wpm.


The resulting numbers for each of the potential wedding party members are then added to determine social satisfaction.


Example:

One pwpm within five miles: 1.00 wpm

Two pwpms between five and ten miles away: 0.95 + 0.95 = 1.90 wpm

Three pwpms between thirty and thirty-five miles away: 3(0.70) = 2.10 wpm

One pwpm between eighty and eighty-five miles away: 0.20 wpm

Total social satisfaction: 1 + 1.9 + 2.1 + 0.2 = 5.2 wpm


Elaborations: This scale may also be used with the number of people “within a day’s drive” who would be chosen and welcomed into one’s wedding party, rather than the more particular 5-mile intervals. Individual definitions of “a day’s drive,” both in terms of number of hours one is willing to drive, and the distance able to be traveled over those hours, vary, but do not factor into this scale.

Limits: The total number of people chosen cannot exceed seven. This number accounts for the potential addition of two parents to the reasonable number of five bridesmaids/groomsmen, and must be adhered to exactly as a maximum for the sake of universalizing the scale.

Less than seven people in a potential wedding party is mathematically acceptable and preferable to adding people to the measure that one would not truly want to include in an ideal wedding party.

This scale cannot measure social satisfaction for those whose social satisfaction relies on factors totally unrelated to being in proximity with close friends and/or family, such as the ambitious, or hermits. See Lemon-Satisfaction scale for alternative measures.