27 March,2009 09:20 AM IST | | Agencies
Oxford University professor James Murray has devised a formula to predict whether couples will end their marriages in divorce.
The mathematician said his formula successfully predicted if a couple would divorce 94 per cent of the time, in a study of 700 newly-married couples.
"Some couples might as well get divorced right away," said Murray.
Murray filmed the newlyweds discussing issues such as money or sex for 15 minutes, and graded their statements.
Statements with humour or affection were given positive scores, while those with defensiveness or anger were given negative ones.
The resulting scores were used to identify whether the relationship was likely to stand the test of time.
The couples were then contacted over one-to-two-year intervals over 12 years, with Murray's formula correctly predicting divorces with an accuracy of 94 per cent.
"What astonished me was that a discussion could so easily be encapsulated in a simple mathematical model," said Murray.
