Thursday, August 27, 2009

Freakonomics of Tokyo Garden Party



Today is the 6th time for Tokyo Garden Party (TGP) to take place
I went to the 3rd one if my memory goes well and it made me skeptical.

There are so many parties going on in Tokyo and what made me interested in TGP was the fact that at least it had a remarkable concept = Beer, Garden, Green and Rooftops which anchored the thing in my brain.

But in fact, these keywords do not correspond to the reality at all, except #Beer.
It is rather:
Garden= at the best, synthetic carpet.
Green=synthetic green carpet or trees?

No, I want to argue here that TGP should have been called YAGJDPR:
Yet Another Gaijin male- Japanese female Dating Party but on Rooftops.

Again, it is not about criticizing the team behind TGP, but their memes.

And I want to prove that mathematically, using data and logics, using the same methods developed by Steven Levitt in his book: Freakonomics


And below is the intended proof.

Among the current 81 confirmed (at the time of 3pm, on its Facebook page) guests there are:
-36 caucasian ♂ (including myself)
-35 japanese ♀
-5 asian or japanese ♂
-the rest is misc.

From the probabilistic view, such a parity in the number of causian ♂ & japanese ♀ is very unlikely, so much so that it cannot happen unless it follows a hidden deterministic rule:

And this rule should be: ♥ TGP is in reality a dating event between gaijin ♂ & jp ♀ ♥.


What do you think about this reasoning?
Any flaws? Please tell me if you discover some.



Post-scriptum (02SEP09):

Just to give you an idea of how almost impossible it is to have a proper conversation related to business in a such a noisy and alcoholic environment. no offense :)








8 comments:

  1. One instance cannot prove totally that there is a permanent pattern.
    But I agree on the fact that TGP would be much more straightforward if it was stating clearly that one of its goals is to do dating :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. If I quote Pascal from a previous post, there will be mention to the fact he came to Japan "to exchange some specific sexual information with cute Shibuya girls".
    But in one of yesterday's tweets, it seems that he didn't like the fact this TGP goal was to "get jp girls".

    I ask why.

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  3. Yes, Guillaume, you are right. It s one of the reasons why I came to Japan.
    But it has nothing to do with the fact that the main goal of TGP is to get jp girls (and to get gaijin guys.)

    I am fine with that goal provided that it's clearly stated in the description.

    I mean I went to the last one in Shibuya and I can tell you that it s very very difficult to exchange serious information about business and other topics.

    So if I want to exchange business related information, I won't go to TGP.

    If I want to get jp girls (and I can tell you that in general they are not cute at all at TGP), I won't go there either.

    If you are fine with jp girls that have in general nothing exciting to say and show off physically, or if you are fine with gaijin guys that are easy going and have nothing disruptive to say, well I think TGP is appropriate. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tokyo Garden Party invites creative professionals to meet, exchange details and possibly work together on future projects. The Facebook group is in no way representative of the people attending the party as we also have a Mixi group, Twitter following and mailing list. Having been to some of our parties you should know that our crowd is much more diverse than you make your audience believe.

    ReplyDelete
  5. >> Guillaume,

    I confirm what Pascal said;
    The 2 following assertions are not contradictory:

    -"one of our goal is to exchange some specific sexual information with cute Shibuya girls".

    -"TGP is yet another dating event between jp girls and gaijin boys"

    ReplyDelete
  6. >> Johan,

    1) Thanks for taking time to argue. I appreciate that.
    2) Again, let me remind you something;
    one of the axioms of the bunkersofist philosophy is the following proposition: it is not sense to criticize creators, but their memes = products.

    So my goal is in no way to criticize you or your team but your creation;

    3) Of course, I based my reasoning on a data sample from facebook, and I should calculate how big the sample should be to be reliable.

    4) I agree, I don't have Mixi data and Twitter data

    5) You may acknowledge that just mentioning that "TGP has also twitter followers, mixi group , ML" does not say anything about to which extent Facebook is "in no way representative" ?


    6) TGP invites "creative" professionals;
    What do you picture by "creative"?

    Just 1 instance that will make you at least smile.
    At the last TGP, (after i published the blog post) I met a french guy who asked me right away what I was doing in Tokyo.
    I had no problem answering him;
    Some time later, I came back to him and asked him at my turn what he was doing in Tokyo; He was really pissed off and told me to fuck off.
    I realized afterwards that he was nampa-ing his jp girl in front of him...




    7) Also, please send me the data (number of participants, gender, country) of the last TGP#6 so that I can infirm or confirm my statement.

    Facebook can provide these statistics if you create a fan group or something.

    Cheers☆

    -julien

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm not sure if the gaijin-guy / J-chick dynamic is the intention of the TPG. But it seems that this pairing quite naturally occurs.

    Over 10 years ago, I wrote a magazine article about why Western males and Japanese females naturally hook up. I will try to dig it up for you guys.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I agree with you, Arka, on the fact that the intention is to gather people in the creative industry. At least it is an unconscious intention.
    But the result, apparently, is a meeting where you don't chat seriously about business and there is nothing wrong about it.
    Looking forward to your article.

    ReplyDelete