The Mathematics of Love

While this is not a book review of Emma Darwin's novel "The Mathematics of Love", I supposed I should spare few words about it. ED writes about the "adventure" of Anna, a 15-year-old who "travels back" to 161 years back through a "portal" in a wardrobe with false back (Suspiciously sounds like a story from another fantasy series? Not quite!). ;) Ah, you should read it yourself because I have deliberately misled you from the real story. ;)

Where was I? Oh, yes, the math of love, people often say there's NO such thing as Math of Love. Love is subjective, thus it cannot be quantified, or objectified. Does it really? Quite a number of scientists have already venture into mathematics (especially, statistic) to define love, or subjects related to love (marriage, relationships, sex (!), etc.) and some researches even reveal surprising findings. Here are a few of the findings:

Secs' Appeal: 8.2 seconds 'needed to fall in love'

The longer a man's gaze rests on a woman when they meet for the first time, the more interested he is.

If it last just four seconds, he may not be all that impressed. But if it breaks the 8.2 second barrier, he could already be in love they say.

However the same is not true for women. They let their eyes linger on men for the same length of time whether they find them attractive or not.

[Read more...]

Math Formula to Predict Divorce

A mathematician has devised a formula to predict whether loved-up couples are bound to spend their lives together or end their marriages in divorce.

Oxford University professor James Murray said his formula successfully predicted whether a couple would divorce 94 percent of the time, in a study of 700 newly-married couples.

"Some couples might as well get divorced right away," said Murray, who was to present his findings to the Royal Society in London on Thursday, after receiving one of its oldest awards.

As part of the research Murray and his team filmed the newlyweds discussing contentious issues such as money or sex for 15 minutes, and graded each statement made during their respective turns of speech.

"What astonished me was that a discussion, sometimes highly charged and emotional, could so easily and usefully be encapsulated in what is actually a simple mathematical model of a couple's interaction," Murray said.

[Read the full news here.]

It appears that psychologist John Gottman might have contributed to Prof Murray's finding. [Read the story here.]

Post-Script: Math & Sex anyone? And I mean the book by Dr Clio Cresswell one (and yes, she explains about "The calculus of Coitus" in the book), not the Math-prodigy-turn-hooker-story.

Another interesting news article titled "The Myth, the Math, the Sex" gives statistic (mathematical prove?) that men are generally are promiscuous by nature by admitting to having more sexual partners than women. Click on the link to read more.