Algebra Points the Way to a Happy Marriage

LONDON (Reuters) - A mathematician says he can predict with almost total accuracy which newly wed couples will enjoy a happy marriage -- using two lines of algebra.

Professor James Murray says the two formulae he devised have a 94 percent success rate when it comes to forecasting whether a couple will stay together, the Daily Telegraph said Friday.

The formulae were calculated during a 10-year study of 700 couples in the United States conducted by Murray, a mathematics professor at the University of Washington, Seattle.

The experiment, conducted with the help of a psychologist, involved observing the couples during a 15 minute conversation when they were newly married, Murray said.

He presented his findings to a conference in Dundee, Scotland, for the first time Thursday, the Telegraph said.

A couple's ability to communicate on subjects such as sex, child-rearing or money was measured using a scale that gave positive points for good signals, such as smiles and affectionate gestures, and negative points for bad signals, such as rolling of the eyes, mocking and coldness.

"We used an accepted psychological scoring system to award them points, such as minus three for scorn and plus two for humor," Murray, the author of "Mathematics for Marriage," told the newspaper.

The points were then converted into algebraic terms enabling the study's authors to make divorce projections. The results were fed into two equations -- one for the husband and one for the wife.

The couples were checked every two years and the model predicted which marriages failed with almost complete accuracy.