We have developed some extraordinary software that would be a society hostess's dream come true! As part of the registration process we measure two personality dimensions, extraversion and anxiety. A person's score for extraversion tells us to what extent they are outgoing or shy. The anxiety score lets us know if that person is laid back or if they have lots of nervous energy. The system uses this information in order to place people at a party where their chance of getting at least one match is highest.

They say that "opposites attract". Well, as it turns out, that's not quite true. We started with the best psychological data available, a hunch or two and came up with some "rules" that we thought would make a good party. We fed this into the system and the computer used these rules to put the first party together. That party got a match rate of around 75%, so we knew we were going in the right direction. Each time the system creates a party it uses slightly different rules. It measures the performance of the changes it makes against the match rate of the party. If the match rate goes up, it keeps the new rules, if it goes down, it discards the new rules and makes a different change for the next party. Each time the system creates a party it learns a little bit more about what it is that makes a party successful. Our match rate currently stands at a whisker over 89%.

We have been conducting a grand experiment never previously attempted. Our goal, to find out what gives a party its "chemistry". We now have a pretty good idea about what combination of personality types will get on best, and the results are rather surprising. So what's the secret? Now THAT would be telling...