The Mathematics of Love Quotes

“The problem is that we don’t really know what we want until we find it. Unlike with Amazon or Netflix, where we truly know our tastes in films and other products, a questionnaire about our personal preferences just isn’t enough to predict who will make us happy. Ultimately, finding a partner is just a lot more complicated than buying a DVD box set.”
― Hannah Fry, The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation

“As girls go through puberty, their hormones will have a direct impact on how their facial features develop. Women with high levels of estrogen will end up with full lips and a large waist-to-hip ratio, while women with lower levels of androgen, the steroid hormones, will keep their short and narrow jaws from childhood, along with their flatter brows—giving them much larger eyes. And—surprise, surprise—this balance of female hormones is also positively linked to fertility.”
― Hannah Fry, The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation

“This is known in economics as the “decoy effect.” What it demonstrates is that the presence of an irrelevant alternative can change how you view your choices. It has been exploited by marketing experts for decades.”
― Hannah Fry, The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation

“Today’s dating sites mean easy access to countless singles tailored to your exact desires, with your perfect match only a click of a button away. Or at least that’s how we think it should be—but sometimes too much choice can just make it harder to weed out the bad options. For some of us, online dating is a succession of frogs with no prince at the end of it. For others, more choice seems to equal more rejection. The good news, as ever, is that math can help.”
― Hannah Fry, The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation

“Despite the name, tit for tat isn’t about playground squabbling. It’s a strategy that encourages cooperation but punishes exploitation. The mathematical version involves cooperating at first, and then simply copying the previous move of your opponent. They stay cooperative, you stay cooperative. They cheat and defect on you, you cheat and defect on them. They go back to being nice, you go back to being nice.”
― Hannah Fry, The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation

“OkCupid, a free dating website founded by a group of mathematicians, with a particularly elegant algorithm at its heart.”
― Hannah Fry, The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation

“Imagine if you could have a series of short online speed dates on a Skype or FaceTime-like system over the course of an evening. Siri-type technology could track your language patterns, while image recognition software could keep a log of your body language. At the end of your evening, a realistic and meaningful compatibility statistic for your matches could be delivered, giving you a much better basis on which to judge who is worthy of being graced with your real-life presence. And mathematics, as the language of science, will play a pivotal role in every one of these developments.”
― Hannah Fry, The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation

“Scientists have known for a long time that our body language will mirror that of someone we are attracted to. Our pupils will become dilated, the words we use in conversation will adjust to mimic the language patterns of the other person, and our laughter will begin to synchronize. All of this happens within a matter of minutes, and all of these signs can be used to quantitatively define a connection between two people.”
― Hannah Fry, The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation

“But for all the extensions and examples, the message remains the same: If you can handle the occasional cringe-inducing rejection, ultimately, taking the initiative will see you rewarded. It is always better to do the approaching than to sit back and wait for people to come to you. So aim high, and aim frequently: The math says so.”
― Hannah Fry, The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation

“But for all the extensions and examples, the message remains the same: If you can handle the occasional cringe-inducing rejection, ultimately, taking the initiative will see you rewarded. It is always better to do the approaching than to sit back and wait for people to come to you. So aim”
― Hannah Fry, The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation

“The message for making yourself appear more attractive is clear. When going to a party to talk to potential partners, choose a friend to go with you who is as similar-looking to you as possible, except slightly less attractive. Having them there will make you seem like a better option.”
― Hannah Fry, The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation