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The Mathematics of Love INTRODUCTION
I’d like to begin with a confession: I am not an expert in love. I have never taken a course in psychology; I understand only the basics of human biochemistry; and my own dating history—much like everyone else’s—is a mixed bag of successes mingled with a healthy series of disasters.
What I am, however, is a mathematician. And in my day job of teasing out and understanding the patterns in human behavior, I’ve come to realize that mathematics can offer a new way of looking at almost anything—even something as mysterious as love.
My aim in writing this book is not to replace any of the other excellent sources available on the science of human connection. I wouldn’t be qualified to describe the intangible thrill, all-consuming passion, or world-ending despair that love can bring. If that’s what you’re after, might I recommend you simply turn to nearly every painting, poem, sculpture, or song created over the last 5,000 years.
Instead, I want to try and offer you a different perspective on the most talked-about subject in the history of human existence, using mathematics as a guide.
You would be forgiven for thinking that love and mathematics don’t seem to naturally sit well together. Human emotions, unlike mathematical equations, are not neatly ordered or well behaved, and the real thrill and essence of romance can’t easily be defined.
But that doesn’t mean that mathematics doesn’t have something to offer. Because mathematics is ultimately the study of patterns—predicting phenomena from the weather to the growth of cities, revealing everything from the laws of the universe to the behavior of subatomic particles. And if we consider them honestly, none of those things is neatly ordered or easily predictable, either.
Thankfully, love—as with most of life—is full of patterns: from the number of sexual partners we have in our lifetime to how we choose who to message on an internet dating website. These patterns twist and turn and warp and evolve just as love does, and are all patterns which mathematics is uniquely placed to describe.
The math will offer a number of dating insights, but I have another confession: The aim of this book isn’t just to illuminate your love life. My hope is also to illuminate how beautiful and relevant math is. I wanted to write this book because I’m always a bit disappointed with the way that math is viewed so negatively by the general public, even if I’m not surprised that it has such a bad reputation. Most people’s only experience of mathematics is as their most hated subject at school: The topics seemed uninspiring, the ideas hadn’t changed in hundreds of years, and the answers were all written in the back of the textbook. It’s no wonder some people think math has nothing new to offer. But this just couldn’t be further from the truth.
Mathematics is the language of nature. It is the foundation stone upon which every major scientific and technological achievement of the modern era has been built. It is alive, and it is thriving. As the physicist and writer Paul Davies puts it:
No one who is closed off from mathematics can ever grasp the full significance of the natural order that is woven so deeply into the fabric of physical reality.
To try to convince you of how insightful, relevant, and powerful mathematics can be, I’ve deliberately tried to choose the one subject that seems as far away from equations and proofs as possible and show how—even in that context—math still has something to offer. I want to share with you my favorite—mathematically verifiable—ways of understanding how love can work.
We’ll calculate your chances of finding the person you’ve been waiting for. I’ll show you a mathematical argument to justify approaching someone in a bar. And we’ll even perform some mathematical tricks to help you to smoothly plan your wedding.
I’ve framed most of the examples using the traditional story of man meets woman. This is simply because having two clear groups targeting each other can help to make the math a lot simpler. The choice of examples aside, though, all of the results and tips in the book are general enough to apply to any gender and sexuality.
On occasion we’ll use data from real-life couples to offer a strategy for singles in search of someone special. Other times we’ll stray into abstraction and oversimplification (as mathematicians so often have a habit of doing) in the hunt for insight. There are elements of economics and science in many of the examples, but the mathematics is always there, even when it’s sometimes playing a more subtle role. The examples might not always apply directly to your own love life, but I hope that you will find them interesting regardless.
Most of all, though the goal of this book is to reveal the patterns that govern one of life’s greatest mysteries, my great hope is that a little bit of insight into the mathematics of love might just inspire you to have a little bit more love for mathematics.
