Editing Mrs. Miniver's problem (section)

==Origin==
The problem derives from "A Country House Visit", one of [[Jan Struther]]'s newspaper articles appearing in the ''[[Times of London]]'' between 1937 and 1939 featuring her character Mrs. Miniver. According to the story:

<blockquote>She saw every relationship as a pair of intersecting circles. It would seem at first glance that the more they overlapped the better the relationship; but this is not so. Beyond a certain point the law of diminishing returns sets in, and there are not enough private resources left on either side to enrich the life that is shared. Probably perfection is reached when the area of the two outer crescents, added together, is exactly equal to that of the leaf-shaped piece in the middle. On paper there must be some neat mathematical formula for arriving at this; in life, none.{{r|struther}}</blockquote>

Louis A. Graham and [[Clifton Fadiman]] formalized the mathematics of the problem and popularized it among [[recreational mathematics|recreational mathematicians]].{{r|ingenious|magpie}}