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Today I want to talk to you
about the mathematics of love.
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I think we can all agree
that mathematicians
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are famously excellent
at finding love.
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But it's not just because
of our dashing personalities
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our superior conversational skills,
our our excellent pencil cases,
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It's also because we've done
a lot of work into the maths
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of how to find the perfect partner.
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In my favorite paper on the subject,
which is entitled,
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"Why I Don't Have a Girlfriend",
Peter Backus tries to rate
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his chances at finding love.
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Now, peter is not a
very greedy man.
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Of all of the available
women in the UK,
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all that Peter's looking for is
somebody who lives near him,
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somebody in the
right age range,
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somebody with a
university degree,
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somebody he's likely
to get on well with,
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somebody attractive,
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somebody who is likely
to find him attractive
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(Laughter),
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and comes up with an
estimate of 26 women
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in the whole of the UK.
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It's not looking very good,
is it Peter?
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Now just to put that
into perspective,
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that's about 400 times fewer
than the best estimates
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of how many intelligent
extra-terrestrial life forms there are.
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And it also gives Peter a
1 in 285,000 chance
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of bumping into any one
of these special ladies
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on a night out.
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I'd like to think that's why
mathematicians don't really bother
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going on nights out anymore.
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The thing is is that I personally
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don't subscribe to
such a pessimistic view.
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I know, just as well
as you do,
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that love doesn't
really work like that
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human emotion
isn't neatly ordered,
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rational, or easily predictable.
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But I also know that that doesn't
mean that mathematics
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doesn't have something
it can offer us
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because, love, as
with most of life,
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is full of patterns
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and mathematics is, ultimately,
all about the study of patterns.
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patterns from predicting
the weather,
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to the fluctuations of
the stock market,
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to the movement
of the planets,
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or the growth of cities.
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If we're being honest, none
of those things are neatly ordered
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Or easily predictable, either.
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Because I believe
that mathematics
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is so powerful that
is has the potential
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to offer us a new way of looking
at almost anything.
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Even something as
mysterious as love.
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And so, to try
to persuade you
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of how totally, excellent
and relevant mathematics is,
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I want to give you my top three
mathematically verifiable tips for love.
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Okay, so top tip #1:
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How to win at online dating.
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So my favorite
online dating website
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is OkayCupid,
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not least because it was
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started by a group
of mathematicians.
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Now because they're
mathematicians,
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they have been collecting
data on everyone
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whose been using their site
for almost a decade.
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And they've been
trying to search
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for patterns in the way that
we talk about ourselves
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and the way that we
interact with each other
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on online dating websites.
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And they've come up with
seriously interesting findings.
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But my particular favorite
is that it turns out
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that on an online
dating website,
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how attractive you are
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does not dictate
how popular you are
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and actually having people
think that you're ugly
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can work to your advantage.
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Let me show you
how this works.
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Okay, in a thankfully
voluntary section,
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you are allowed to rate
how attractive people are
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between 1 and 5.
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And if we compare this score,
this average score
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to how many messages a
selection of people receive,
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You can begin to get a sense
of how attractiveness
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links to popularity
on online dating.
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So this is a graph
that the online
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OkayCupid guys
have come up with
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and the important
thing to notice
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is that it's not totally true
that the more attractive you are,
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the more messages you get.
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But the question arises then
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of what is it about people up here
who are so much more popular
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than people down here
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even though they have the
same score of attractiveness?
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And the reason why is that it's
not just straight-forward looks
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that are important.
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So let me try to illustrate
their findings
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with an example.
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If you take someone
like Portia de Rossi,
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everybody agrees
that Portia de Rossi
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is a very beautiful woman.
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Nobody thinks
that she's ugly,
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but she's not a supermodel.
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If you compare
Portia de Rossi
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to someone like
Sarah Jessica Parker,
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now, a lot of people,
myself included,
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think that Sarah Jessica Parker
is seriously fabulous
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and possibly one of the
most beautiful creatures
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to have ever have walked
the face of the earth.
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But, some other people,
e.i. most of the internet,
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seem to think that she
looks a bit like a horse
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(Laughter).
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Now, I think that if
you ask people
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how attractive Sarah Jessica Parker
or Portia de Rossi are,
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and you ask them to give
them a score between 1 and 5,
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I reckon that they would
average out to the same score.
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But the way that people would vote
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would be very different.
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So Portia's scores would
all be clustered around
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the four because everybody
agrees that she's very beautiful.
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whereas Sarah Jessica Parker
divides opinion.
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There a huge spread
in her scores.
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And actually it's this
spread that counts.
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It's this spread that
makes you more popular
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on online internet
dating websites.
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So what this means then
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is that if some people think
that you're attractive,
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you're actually better off
having some other people
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think that you're a massive minger.
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That's much better than
everybody thinking
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that you're the cute
girl next door.
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i think that this
makes a bit more sense
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when you think in terms
of the people
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who are sending
these messages .
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So let's say that you think
somebody's attractive
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but you suspect that
other people
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won't necessarily be
that interested.
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that means that there is less competition for you
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and that there's an extra incentive
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for you to get in touch
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whereas compare that to if you think
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somebody is attractive but
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you suspect that everybody is going
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to think they're attractive
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well, why would you bother humiliating yourself
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here's where the really interesting part comes
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people choose the pictures
that they use on an online, dating website
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they often try to minimize the things
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that they think people will find unattractive
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the classic example is that
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people who are a little but overweight
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deliberately choosing a very cropped phto
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or bald men for example
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deliberatly choosing pictures
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where they're wearing hats
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but this is the opposite of
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what you should do if
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want to be succesful
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you should really instead
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play up to whatever it is that makes you different
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even if you think that
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some people will find you unattractive
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because the people who fancy you
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are just going to fancy you anyway
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and the unimportant losers who don't
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well, they only play out to you r advantage
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Okay, top tip #2, how to pick
the perfect partner
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so let's imagine then that
you're a roaring success
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on the dating scene
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but the question arises of how
do you then convert
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that success into longer term happiness
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and in particular,
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how do you decide when is the
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right time to settle down
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now generally, it's not advisable
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to just cash in the first person
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who comes along and shows you any interest
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at all
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but, equally, you don't want to leave it
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too long if you want to maximize your
chances of long term happiness
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as my favorite author, jane austen put it,
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"an unmarried woman of seven and twenty
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can never hope to feel or
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inspire affection again."
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laughter
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thanks, jane
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so the question is then
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how do you know when is the right
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time to settle down
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given all the people that you
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can date in your lifetime
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thankfully, there is a rather delicious bit
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of mathematics that we can use to
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help us out here
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so lets imagine then,
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that you start dating when you're 15
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and ideally, you'd like to be
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married by the time you're 35
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the number of people that you
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could potentially date across your lifetime
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and they'll be at kind of varying levels
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of goodness
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now the rules are that when you cash in
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and get married
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you can't look ahead and see
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what you could have had
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and equally, you can't go back
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and change your mind
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in my experience at least
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i find that people don't typically
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like being recalled years after
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being passed up
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for somebody else, or that's just me
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so the math says then
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that what you should do
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in the first 37 percent of your dating window
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you should reject everybody
as serious marriage potential
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and then, you should pick the
next person who comes along
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who is better than everyone that you've seen before
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so here's the example
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now if you do this
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it can be mathematically proven in fact
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that this is the best possible way of
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maximizing your chances of
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finding your perfect partner
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now, unfortunately i have to tell
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you that this method does come with some risks
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for instance, imagine if your
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perfect partner appeared during your
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first 37 percent
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now Uunfortunately, you'd have to reject them
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now, if you're following the maths
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im afraid that no one else comes along
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better than anyone you've seen before
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so you have to go on rejecting everyone
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and die along
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laughter
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probably surrounded by cats
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nibbling at your remains
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okay, another risk
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is, let's imagine instead
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that the first people that you dated
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in your first 37 percent are just incredibly
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dull, terrible people
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now, that's okay, cause you're in your
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rejection phase, so you can reject them
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but, then imagine that
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the next person to cmd along
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is just marginally less boring, dull and terrible
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than everybody that you've seen before.
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now, if you are following the maths
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im afraid that you have to
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marry them
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and end up in a relationship
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that is frankly suboptimal
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sorry about that
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but i do think that there's an opportunity here
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for hallmark to cash in on
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and really cater to this market
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with a valentines day card like this
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[my darling husband,
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you are marginally less terrible
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than the first 37 percent
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of people i dated]
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it's actually more romantic
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than i normally manage
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okay, so this method doesn't
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give you a 100 percent success rate
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but there's no other
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possible strategy that can do any better
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and actually, in the wild there are certain
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types of fish that follow
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this exct strategy
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so they reject every possible suitor that turns up in
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in the first 37 percent of the mating season, then they
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pick the next fish
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who comes along after
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that window who is, i don't know
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bigger and burlier than all the fish that they've seen
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i also think that subconsciously
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humans, we sort of do this anyway
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we give ourselves enough time to
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play the field, get a feel for the market place
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or whatever
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when we're young
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and then we only start looking seriously at
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potential marriage candidates when we hit
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our mid to late 20's
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i think this is conclusive prrof
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if ever it were needed
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that everybody's brains are prewired to be
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just a little bit mathematical
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okay, so that was top tip #2
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top tip #3 how to avoid divorse
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okay so let's imagine then that yu
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picked your perfect partner
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and you're settling into a lifelong relationship with them
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now, i like to think that everybody
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would like to avoid divorce
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from, piers morgan's wife, maybe?
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but it's a sad fact in modern life
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that one in two marriages end in divorce
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with the rest of the world
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not being far behind
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now, you can be forgiven, perhaps
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for thinking that the arguments
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that precede a marital breakup
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are not an ideal candidate for mathematical
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investigation
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for one, it's very hard to know what you should
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be measuring and what you should be
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quantifying.
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but this didn't stop a psychologist,
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john gotman,
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who did exactly THAT
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he observed, hotman observed
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hundreds of couples having a conversation
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and recorded well, everything you could think of
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so he recorded what was said in
the conversation
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he recorded skin conductivity
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he recorded their facial expresisons
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heart rates, their blood pressure
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basically everything apart
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from whether or not the wife was always right
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, which incidentally she totally is
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but what got man found
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what got man and his team found
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was that one of the most
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important predictors for whether
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or not a couple is going to get divorced
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is how positive or negative
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each partner was being in the conversation
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now couples that were very low risk
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scored a lot more positive on got man's scale
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than negative.
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whereas bad relationship
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as in, those that are pribably
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going to get divorced,
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they found themselves getting into
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a spiral of negativity
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now just by using these very simple ideas
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gotman and his group were able to predict
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whether a given couple
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was going to get divorced
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with a 90 percent accuracy
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but it wasn't until he teamed up
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with a mathematician james murray
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that they really started to understand what caused
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these negativity spirals and how they occur
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and the results that they found
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i think are just incredibly, impressively, simple
-
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and interesting
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so these equations, they predict
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how the wife or husband is going
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to respond in the next turn
of the conversation
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how positive or negative
they're going to be
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and these equations, they depend on
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mood of the person when they're on their own
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the mood of the person when they're with
their partner
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but most importantly, they depend on
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how much the husband and wife
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influence one another
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now i think it's important to point out
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that at this stage that these exact
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equations have also been shown t
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to be perfectly
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able to describe what happens between two
-
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countries in an arms race
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laughter
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so that an arguing couple
-
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spiraling into negativity
-
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teetering on the brink of divoirce
-
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is actually mathematically equivalent to
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the beginning of a nuclear war
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laughter
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but the really important term
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in this equation is the influence
-
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that people have on one another
-
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and in particular
-
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something called the negativity threshhold
-
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now the negativity threshhold
-
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you can think of as
-
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how annoying the husband can
-
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be before the wife starts to get really pissed of
-
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and vice versa
-
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now i always thought that good marriages
-
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are about compromise and understanding
-
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and allowing the person
-
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to have the space to be themselves
-
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so i would have thought that
-
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perhaps the most successful relationships
-
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are the ones where there is
-
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a really high negativity threshhold
-
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where couples let things go
-
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and only brought things up if there
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really were a big deal
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but actually, the mathematics
-
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and subsequent findings by the team
-
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have shown that the exact opposite is true
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the best couples of the most successful couples
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are the ones are the ones with a
-
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really low negativity threshold
-
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these are the couples that
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don't let anything go unnoticed
-
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they allow each other some room to complain
-
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these are the couples that are continually trying to repair
-
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their own relationship
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that have a much more positive outlook on their marriage
-
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couples that don't let things go
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and couples that don't let trivial things end up being
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a really big deal
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now of course, it takes more than just a low negativity
-
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threshold and not compromising
-
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to have a succesful relationship
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but i think that it's quite interesting
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to know that there is really
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mathematical evidence to support that
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you should never let the sun
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go down on your anger
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so those are my top three tips for how
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maths can help you with
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love and relaitonships
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but i hope that aside form
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these aside form these tips
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they also give you a little bit of
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insight into the power of mathematics
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because for me,
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equationsand symbols
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aren't just a thing
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they are a voice that
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speaks out about the incredible richness
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of nature
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and the startling simplicity
-
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in the patterns that
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twist and turn
-
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and warp and evolve
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around us
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from how the world wokrs
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to how we behave
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so i hope that perhaps
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for just a couple of you
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a little bit of insight into
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mathematics of love
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can persuade you
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to have a little bit more love
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for mathematics
-
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thank you
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applause
NG
Hi English LC,
At 14:35:88, the word 'threshhold' has an extra 'h'.
'and in particular, something called
the negativity threshhold.'
Krystian Aparta
The English transcript was updated on 2/28/2017.