Hannah Flebbe Backus, another British mathematician, is more optimistic. She calculated that the number of potential partners was 65,438+0,000. What's more encouraging is that her recently published Mathematics of Love, guided by mathematics, calculates the optimal path of love and marriage, which is universal in gender and sexual orientation.
In the face of this 1000 potential partner, the first thing to screen is the appearance-alas, this is a world of looking at faces after all. There is a widely circulated mathematical law about appearance-golden ratio. People think that in a perfect face, the length of the mouth should be 1.6 18 times the width of the nose base, the length of the eyebrows should be 1.6 18 times the length of the eyes, and so on. But the problem is that it is not easy to change your appearance.
Fortunately, personal choice will play an important role in choosing a spouse. Choice means probability, and probability means that mathematics can appear. Although we always want to have free will, we often follow some rules when making decisions. For example, the big barrel of popcorn in the cinema is only 5 yuan more expensive than the middle barrel, but it is one and a half more. People who think they are sober will buy big barrels-especially when there is a middle barrel next to them for comparison. Therefore, dan ariely Friendship, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, provides a method to make himself more attractive through a series of comparative experiments: choose a person who looks as similar as possible but slightly inferior to you.
In A Beautiful Mind, which won the Oscar for best film in 2002, American mathematician johnf nash's game theory played an important role. He and three friends of equal strength have taken a fancy to a beautiful blonde at the same time, and there are four girls who are slightly inferior to the blonde. Nash suggested that if we all laid hands on the blonde, it would be killing each other, and then we would turn to her friends, who would disdain to be a spare tire; Therefore, the best way is for us to ignore the beauty and find her friends separately, without affecting each other.
Mathematics of Love points out that game theory is also applicable to virtual social networks. According to statistics, the most private messages received on social networking sites are not those recognized beautiful women, but those controversial types. Because the former has many competitors, many people are discouraged, while the latter makes people feel that the competition will not be so fierce, but they are more willing to take action.
Spending money is more and more attractive, and people don't waste their youth. Sooner or later, most of us will say goodbye to the carefree single life. The question is, when should we settle down? Frye got a stable figure of 37% through formula calculation. If you start dating at the age of 15 and want to settle down before the age of 40, you'd better refuse everyone in the first 37% of the dating time (before your 24th birthday)-use this time to get familiar with the market and get your expectations for your life partner. Once you have passed the rejection stage, you should choose the next person who appears better than every previous lover.
For couples who are about to get married, the wedding is another threshold between ideal and reality. Parents, budget, venue, bridesmaids and other factors should be considered. When we are inevitably crazy, omnipotent mathematics comes on stage again. If the venue can only accommodate 100 people, then according to the number of invited families and the attendance probability, a numerical value is calculated, and the top 100 people are your invited objects.
It is difficult for guests to arrive. If two people who don't like each other are arranged at the same table, it is another disaster. The simple way is to set a table and compare every two guests by scoring the happiness of sitting together. The higher the score, the more you should arrange to sit at a table. However, people who have studied permutation and combination should know that it is best to do this job by computer, because for a wedding of 10 table and 100 guests, the seating arrangement will be astronomical, and when you finish the calculation, it will last forever.
The story of the prince and princess in fairy tales ends with a grand wedding. How can we live happily together? Math will tell you. John Geithmann, an American psychologist, has devoted himself to analyzing marriage with mathematical models for decades, and the accuracy of predicting divorce is as high as 90%. His team found that people tend to think that couples who seem more tolerant will have more stable marriages. But the statistical truth is that couples who have low endurance but know how to communicate have the longest marriage relationship. Because they never accumulate anger, small things will not be infinitely magnified.
The above theories are supported by calculation formulas and mathematical models, and those interested can consult the details themselves. American statistician George ·E·P· bocks once said, "All models are fallacious, but some are useful." The best applied mathematicians know the advantages and limitations of their own research projects. They understand the importance of things outside the formula and respect other viewpoints.
Finally, I tell you a good news. Even the pessimistic Bacchus overcame the small probability and got married last year. We may get together with people who never want to associate-even if that person is the last life on earth.