You may have heard of something called a unity formula, or Seger formula. This is a way of expressing a glaze by the ratios of its oxides rather than % of raw materials. It is one of the primary methods used in analyzing glazes. I'm going to skip the detailed math. But the concept is that using information about each raw material, you create a ratio of the amount of flux to the amount of silica and alumina. These ratios can then be compared to ones which have been determined to work in a certain way at a specific temperature.
These calculations are very detailed and take a long time to do by hand. And because there are many factors that all interact, it would take a long time to learn each material and the effect it has on a glaze. So potters have created a variety of computer programs that simplify the analysis and formulation of glazes.
You can learn more by taking the self paced on-line tutorial called Glaze Teach. GlazeTeachThe writers of this tutorial offer a glaze calculation software program called Matrix.
Digitalfire, a website that explains glaze chemistry and sells a software program called Insight to help automate this glaze analysis process.

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