Posted 3/20/2004 12:39:00 PM by Douglas

As if women didn't have enough trouble picking out a pair of shoes on their own, now some egghead had to go and throw algebra into the mix.

In the battle to tell you the sort of information you didn't know you need to know, scientists have explained the formula that wearers of high-heeled shoes can use to work out how high they can go - just as the most famous Blahnik-wearers, the stars of Sex and the City, totter from our screens.

Physicists at the Institute of Physics have devised a formula that, based on your shoe size, tells you the maximum height of heel you can wear without toppling over or suffering agonies. And it is:

h = Q.(12+3s/8)

Whaaaa? Let's look at the formula a bit closer:

• h is the maximum height of the heel (in cm)
• S is the shoe size (UK ladies sizes). This factor makes sure that the base of support is just good enough for an experienced, and sober, high-heel wearer not to fall over
• Q is a sociological factor. It equals p.(y+9).L, divided by(t+1).(A+1).(y+10).(L+£20)M

This is already making my head hurt. Now we've got to go into Q (yet it doesn't say what M is)

• p the probability that wearing the shoes will help you "pull" (in a range from zero to one, where one is a certainty and zero is stick to carpet slippers). If the shoes are a turn-off, there's no point wearing them
• y is the number of years experience you have in wearing high heels. As you become more adept, you can wear a higher heel. Beginners should take it easy
• L is the cost of the shoes, in pounds. Clearly, if the shoe is particularly expensive, you can put up with a higher heel
• t the time since the shoe was the height of fashion, in months (0 = it's the "in thing" right now). One has to suffer for one's art, and if the shoes are terribly fashionable, you should be prepared to put up with a little pain
• A is units of alcohol consumed. If you're planning on drinking, be careful to give yourself a little leeway for reduced co-ordination.

"Hold on, I don't know if I can have another glass of wine: It may throw off the calculation I did on my footwear."

Now that's just dumb.

Update: I just realized something! Instead of trying to figure out what kind of shoe to buy, men could use the same formula to determine how drunk a woman was going to get.