Customer Reviews

The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models (Bradford Books)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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This book has an excellent introduction to model building; one of the best I have ever read. Starts with easy math and college stuff you probably forgot much of, then shows how to do great and unexpected things with it. You dont have to know all the math to see how powerful it can be for exploring any relation: man:woman, customer:seller, investor:company. What attracts them, engages them and holds them. When it doesnt work, why not. The other use? People who want to understand better why marriages work or dont. The findings the authors made are here. You dont need to know or even read the math parts to be able to use the findings, which are new and powerful. Certainly worth $28 bucks and a read.

Chapter 2 with an overview of marriage research was fascinating. Chapters 3-8 with a discussion of non-linear modeling and catastrophe theory were very clear.

The sections applying the non-linear modeling to marriage interactions were less convincing. Part of the problem is that each non-linear model concerns a single discussion rather than the state of a marriage as a whole. A marriage with two steady states is one thing; a conversation with two steady states is something else.

Gottman's previous work has found that the ratio of positive to negative interactions in a single marriage discussion can strongly predict whether the married couples will divorce. Couples with a good marriages had an average of a 5 to 1 positive/negative ratio while couples that ended up divorcing had an average of a 0.8 to 1 positive/negative ratio. Not surprisingly, the parameters of the functions of the nonlinear models were also different between the divorcing and the happily married couples, but it isn't clear that the additional complexity gets the authors much, if any, analytical benefit.

I loved this book. Unreservedly, uninhibitedly, with my heart and soul. I'm loaning it out now to all my nearest and dearest. Perhaps you'll disagree with its conclusions about the applicability of its particular non-linear models to marital interactions, but surely you'll appreciate its subtly saucy asides and its smackdowns on the dirty dogs of qualitative research, those rascals who make hypotheses and draw conclusions without the rigor of mathematics to back them up.

So, as a dilettante and casual appreciator of good writing and good science, I found a lot to like. But I also have to speak out, as a sometime math tutor, of the fantastic quality of its middle chapters. Essentially, the middle chapters go to the trouble of teaching you all the math you need to appreciate their models, from pre-calculus onward. The explanations are so rich, so clear, and so grounded in practical reality, that I think they'd be helpful to a more general audience - anyone who needs a refresher or any beginning student of calculus or beyond who isn't "getting it". The authors don't stick to what you do to do the math, the rote symbol manipulation on which all too many textbooks focus, but what the math itself does, what the math means, and how it relates to processes in the real world. It filled me with a glowing warm warming glow, I have to say.

This book offers common sense for marriages, but now it adds math. If both partners have the mathematics background and enjoy complex equations, this book is worth the value in entertainment. Modelling your marriage is just plain goofy, which adds to the novelty of this book.

If you don't enjoy sitting down and going through a math book doing the problems and setting up equations, this is not the book for you.

I love John Gottman's work and I assign him regularily to my students. His work on partnership processes has always been first-rate and this book is no exception. Don't let the math scare you--it is an interesting read, indeed!