The Mathematics of Marriage

Statistical Physics and Complexity Group meeting

The Mathematics of Marriage

  • Event time: 11:30am
  • Event date: 12th June 2013
  • Speaker: Timothy Bush (Formerly School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
  • Location: Room 2511,

Event details

The mathematical biologist James D. Murray, made an interesting attempt to study the dynamics of human marital interactions. Working with the psychologist John Gottman, he developed a model which they claim has a greater than 94% success rate at predicting divorces in couples. The model is fitted to data obtained merely by filming the couples interacting for 15 minutes. I will describe how the marriage model actually works, before showing how we can uncover some novel insights into human behaviour and the dynamics of relationships by analysing the stability of the steady states. PHd students can expect different content to what I presented in my PIPC seminar.