Ding dong! Getting to a party at the perfect time can be a real obstacle course. If you are too early, there is a risk that you will interrupt your host when he is not yet ready to welcome you. If you’re late, you risk being rude to the person who invited you, not to mention that you miss a good part of the evening. To remedy this difficult dilemma, the American magazine The Atlantic shared a formula from mathematician Daniel Bliss to determine what time you should go to someone’s house.

Relayed by Slate, this calculation requires you to answer a few very simple questions. Here they are :

Math for party arrival times!The result…accounts for how punctual your friends are, how early or late you prefer to be, how excited you are about the party, and how accurately you tend to predict the time youll get there. pic.twitter.com/WJ1h4tJHRh

Planet also did the test! Let’s say our friends are very punctual and we trust their punctuality completely (10/10). However, they may not all arrive at the same time (1/10)! We don’t really mind arriving early (2/10), but we hate being late (9/10). We rather want to go to this little party (7/10), and we usually arrive 10 minutes late to give the host time to be ready to receive us.

According to The Atlantic’s simulator, we should arrive six minutes (no more, no less!) after the time indicated in the invitation.