Final Keynote - Dr Hannah Fry – The Mathematics of Love

Human behaviour is full of patterns so mathematics can help us describe

Hannah challenged herself to find the question as far away from maths as possible

Peter Bakkus worked out how many women in the world would be ideal for him – he found out it was 26

-        Peter broke down the serialised elements of the population to work out how to go from the total population to the actual number

The science of love shows that you don’t know what you want until you have it

-        Don’t form a list!

The golden ratio is still perceived as a way to denote beauty

-        In architecture as well as beauty, this just isn’t science

Naturally symmetrical faces show a lack of childhood illness as children faces grow less symmetrically when ill

-        But for moving images we prefer asymmetry (we often move the right side of our mouths more than the left when speaking)

Hormones are the biological cause of the characteristics that we deem as beautiful – it’s all about fertility and higher reproduction possibility

Beauty isn’t everything – develop your charm!

To trick people in to thinking you are more attractive than you are then use the irrelevant alternative theory

-        Find a slightly less attractive wingman / wingwoman

You are statistically more likely to have an attractive partner if you approach them rather than waiting for them to come to you

Using OK Cupid data to analyse preference to attractiveness is really interesting

-        Lesson – don’t just rely on average values – look at the distribution

-        Find a ‘quirky’ partner and find less competition so play up on what makes you different

You can use Optimal Stopping theory of working out when to stop dating and settle down

-        For the first 37% of you dating time you reject everyone but after that find the best person you have come across after that 37% of time

-        Can be applied to house buying etc (Zebra fish do this)

Hannah’s favourite tip:

Gottman studied couples who had their contentious conversations filmed mapped the times that the individuals spoke and whether they were therefore low risk or high risk of divorce

-        They found a theory that matched 95% of the time

-        Having a low negativity threshold in your conversations are much stronger together

So the tip: Communicate often, honestly and positively.