There's a 70% chance that a recession will hit in the next six months, according to new research from the MIT Sloan School of Management and State Street Associates. The researchers created an index comprised of four factors and then used the Mahalanobis distance — a measure initially used to analyze human skulls — to determine how current market conditions compare to prior recessions.

Human Skull X-ray images AP and Lateral View isolated on Black Background Suphachai praserdumrongchai | Getty Images

"The Mahalanobis distance was originally conceived to measure the statistical similarity of the values of a set of dimensions for a given skull to the average values of those dimensions for a chosen group of skulls," the researchers explained. It measures the distance between a point and a certain distribution. Using this principle, the researchers analyzed four market factors — industrial production, nonfarm payrolls, stock market return and the slope of the yield curve — on a monthly basis. They then measured how the current relationship between the four metrics compares to historical readings.