Okay, so that was Top Tip #2. Now, Top Tip #3: How to avoid divorce.
Okay, so let's imagine then that you picked your perfect partner and you're settling into a lifelong relationship with them.
Now, I like to think that everybody would ideally like to avoid divorce, apart from, I don't know, Piers Morgan's wife, maybe?
But it's a sad fact of modern life that 1 in 2 marriages in the States ends in divorce, with the rest of the world not being far behind. 【跟读】1 in 2 marriages in the States ends in divorce, with the rest of the world not being far behind.
Now, you can be forgiven, perhaps for thinking that the arguments that precede a marital breakup are not an ideal candidate for mathematical investigation. 【词义】To precede sth. means to come before it.（领先）
For one thing, it's very hard to know what you should be measuring or what you should be quantifying.
But this didn't stop a psychologist, John Gottman, who did exactly that.
Gottman observed hundreds of couples having a conversation and recorded, well, everything you can think of.
So he recorded what was said in the conversation, he recorded their skin conductivity, he recorded their facial expressions, their heart rates, their blood pressure, basically everything apart from whether or not the wife was actually always right, which incidentally she totally is.
But what Gottman and his team found was that one of the most important predictors for whether or not a couple is going to get divorced was how positive or negative each partner was being in the conversation.
【选择】 - How was John Gottman's research relevant to the theme of the talk? -It shows that even sth. as complex as marriage can be evaluated with math.
【选择】 -What does Fry's third tip address? -making your marriage last （如何避免离婚）
【跟读】 It's very hard to know what you should measure or quantify.
Now, couples that were very low-risk scored a lot more positive points on Gottman's scale than negative.
Whereas bad relationships, by which I mean, probably going to get divorced, they found themselves getting into a spiral of negativity.
Now just by using these very simple ideas, Gottman and his group were able to predict whether a given couple was going to get divorced with a 90 percent accuracy.
But it wasn't until he teamed up with a mathematician, James Murray, that they really started to understand what causes these negativity spirals and how they occur.
And the results that they found I think are just incredibly impressively simple and interesting.
So these equations, they predict how the wife or husband is going to respond in their next turn of the conversation, how positive or negative they're going to be.
And these equations, they depend on the mood of the person when they're on their own, the mood of the person when they're with their partner, but most importantly, they depend on how much the husband and wife influence one another.
Now, I think it's important to point out at this stage, that these exact equations have also been shown to be perfectly able at describing what happens between two countries in an arms race.
So that -- an arguing couple spiraling into negativity and teetering on the brink of divorce -- is actually mathematically equivalent to the beginning of a nuclear war.
But the really important term in this equation is the influence that people have on one another, and in particular, something called the negativity threshold.
Now, the negativity threshold, you can think of as how annoying the husband can be before the wife starts to get really pissed off, and vice versa.
Now, I always thought that good marriages were about compromise and understanding and allowing the person to have the space to be themselves.
So I would have thought that perhaps the most successful relationships were ones where there was a really high negativity threshold.
Where couples let things go and only brought things up if they really were a big deal.
But actually, the mathematics and subsequent findings by the team have shown the exact opposite is true.
The best couples, or the most successful couples, are the ones with a really low negativity threshold.
These are the couples that don't let anything go unnoticed and allow each other some room to complain. 【此句跟读】
These are the couples that are continually trying to repair their own relationship, that have a much more positive outlook on their marriage.
Couples that don't let things go and couples that don't let trivial things end up being a really big deal. 【词义】trivial=has little value or importance（琐碎的，不重要的，微不足道的）
【选择】-What is the negativity threshold? -How much negativity a husband or wife can take before getting angry.（消极阈值）
【选择】-In what way does the finding of the relationship between negativity threshold and sucessful marriage contradict common knowledge? -（消极阈值和成功婚姻之间的关系的学说如何否定普遍认知的？） -Couples who focus on problems in their relationship are more successful. （原文表明最好的夫妇消极阈值很低。The best couples, or the most successful couples, are the ones with a really low negativity threshold. ）
Now of course, it takes bit more than just a low negativity threshold and not compromising to have a successful relationship.
But I think that it's quite interesting to know that there is really mathematical evidence to say that you should never let the sun go down on your anger.
【选择】-What does Fry emphasize about her tip on compromising? （妥协，让步） -Not compromising isn't the only way to help a relationship.
So those are my top three tips of how maths can help you with love and relationships.
But I hope that aside from their use as tips, they also give you a little bit of insight into the power of mathematics.
Because for me, equations and symbols aren't just a thing.
They're a voice that speaks out about the incredible richness of nature and the startling simplicity in the patterns that twist and turn and warp and evolve all around us, from how the world works to how we behave.
So I hope that perhaps, for just a couple of you, a little bit of insight into the mathematics of love can persuade you to have a little bit more love for mathematics.
Thank you. (Applause, the end.)
【选择】 -What was Fry's reason for providing the three tips? -To instill a appreciation for the application of mathematics. （原文“了解爱的数学可以说服你对数学有一点点爱”。a little bit of insight into the mathematics of love can persuade you to have a little bit more love for mathematics. ）