A professor from Cornell University and a senior engineer from Facebook have come up with an algorithm that can figure out who a certain Facebook user is dating and assess the how long the relationship will last.

A professor from Cornell University working with a senior engineer from Facebook have come up with an algorithm that can figure out who a certain Facebook user is dating and assess how long the relationship will last.

They created the algorithm by looking at data from 1 point 3 million users of the social networking site that met certain standards, like being at least 20 years old, listed as in a relationship, married, dating or engaged and had at least 50 friends.

They looked at the number of mutual friends that two people shared, and used this data to create metrics based on their level of dispersion, or how many friends they shared and whether or not those friends were also connected on Facebook.

Their results indicate that a couple with a high level of dispersion, or when each is connected to their significant other’s friends but those friends are not connected, then the relationship tends to last longer.

But some Facebook users list their relationship status as married or engaged to one of their friends as a kind of online gag, which might affect the accuracy of the algorithm.