← All parts of this equation

Equation 1 · Part 6 · The 37-Culture Study and What Replication Did to Mate-Choice Science

≈

D≈d12+d22+⋯+dk2D \approx \sqrt{d_1^2 + d_2^2 + \cdots + d_k^2}
≈

What this part means

Approximately equal to; the equality is not exact.

Its job in the formula

Approximately equal to; the equality is not exact.

The passage around this formula

What the multivariate reframing from Daniel Conroy-Beam’s research group adds is a reason the two underlying questions, how big is any one sex gap and how do several gaps combine, can have genuinely different answers. People do not evaluate potential partners one trait at a time; they weigh a whole pattern of traits together, so that a modest deficit on one dimension can be offset by a surplus on another, the way two towns 100 miles apart on each of two separate axes end up not 100 but roughly 141 miles apart along the diagonal between them [ 9 ] . In simplified form, treating the dimensions as uncorrelated and standardized, that compounding looks like an ordinary Euclidean distance across k…

Read this part in the article →

Learn the underlying idea

A variable is a named place for a value. Its letter is a local label: x can mean position in one formula and a data point in another.

Open the illustrated variables: a letter stands for a value guide →

Sources cited in the surrounding passage

These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.