Remember the Dating Equation from a while back, that formula that determines the socially acceptable bounds for the age of a female companion given the age of the male partner? Well, the crack data analysis team at Revolution Analytics decided to take the 100 hottest celebrity couples of 2010, and create a scatterplot of the couple's ages (using R), to see how well celebrities adhere to the rule that no man should date a woman less than half his age, plus seven years.

It turns out that celebrity men need a little more latitude to define what makes a socially-acceptable relationship. For the Hot 100 at least, the rule appears to be: never date a woman younger than half the man's age, plus six (rather than seven) years. (That also means a celebrity woman should never date a man older than twice her age, less six years.) With that tweak, only Hugh Hefner and Madonna break the rule; the remaining 98 hottest celebrities fit the model perfectly. (It's not clear how the Rule applies to Elton John and David Furnish, though.)

And what better way to display such groundbreaking analysis than with a fancy infographic? We've even thrown in some analysis of celebrity income data in there for good measure. Click on the image for a full-size version.





