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Scientists Define Murphy's Law
Jesrad writes "A mathematician, a psychologist and an economist commissioned by British Gas have finally put into mathematical terms what we all knew: that things don't just go wrong, they do so at the most annoying moment.The formula, ((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10)), indicates that to beat Murphy's Law (a.k.a. Sod's Law) you need to change one of the parameter: U for urgency, C for complexity, I for importance, S for skill, F for frequency and A for aggravation. Or in the researchers' own words: "If you haven't got the skill to do something important, leave it alone. If something is urgent or complex, find a simple way to do it. If something going wrong will particularly aggravate you, make certain you know how to do it." Don't you like it when maths back up common sense ?"
Maths doesn't work like that. Writing something down as a formula doesn't automatically tell you something new or prove something.
It sounds like they're trying to describe how things can go wrong with a formula. That's nice, but it's just their opinion.
it's not "((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))" ...
it's "((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(cos(F/10))".....
cmon guys... this is clearly BS..... it's like the formula for measuring happiness in currency.... pure BS...
-Leav
I own a pump action golf ball cannon. I made it myself.
Better avoid a frequency of exactly 5*Pi.
I believe they are calculating statistical possibilities, not tryning to find some yes/no answer for whether something will or will not go wrong.
"things don't just go wrong, they do so at the most annoying moment"
That's because, when things go wrong, it becomes the most annoying moment. My dishwaster just starting leaking all over the floor btw. Damn you murphy!
No, mathematics is exactly that: a description of the phenmoena. The "laws" we're always talking about are just reasonable expectations of consistent phenomena, phrased to exclude irrelevant factors and products, while describing the relationships between the phenomena actually involved. "The map is not the territory". Math is the map. Observations are facts, and formulae are strict, testable interpretations of patterns among facts. Opinions are based on beliefs and faith - so one can have an opinion about a fact, or a formula, but the formula itself is another form of idea: a theory, which is a testable statement about facts. The tests themselves often tell something new, and proofs are typically produced by analyzing the formula with other proven mathematics. That's how we can base our physics on Newton's _Principia Mathematica_, although his math is in an archaic language little resembling modern algebra or the calculus it spawned.
--
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However, perhaps we are all a little quick to judge. After all, all we have is a news summary. We must wait for the full article to come out in a scientific journal. May I suggest Annals of Improbable Reaserch ? Scorn it now, but perhaps we are seeing next year's recipients of the ig Noble Prize?
So what mode should the calculator be in for the sine bit?
Actually, by definition, this cannot be the forumla Murphy's law, because Murphy's law must have surely caused something to go wrong with the formula......
It's the Law of Go Figure that rules my life.
Like when you're looking for somebody inside a building. You park next to their car and go inside to find them. If you don't leave a note on their car, they will come out the other door, get into their car without noticing yours, and leave. If you do leave a note, you'll meet up with them inside. Go figure. It's similar, but it's not the same.
I always wonder about those types of "laws"--nobody compares the number of times things go wrong at the worst possible moment to the number of times they do so at the best possible moment, or to the number of times they don't go wrong at all, or to the number of times things save your ass by going "wrong." I think it's pretty obvious that you only notice the times that really suck. I've posted thousands of messages on the internet--sometimes the page gets borked and I lose my post, but it's not exactly a given that if I spend an hour on something then Firefox is going to eat it.
Same for the Law of Go Figure, much as I like it. Seems that if I think "I should save now even though I'm not done" and then get distracted and keep writing, the post does get eaten. But I've started to look for the times that it doesn't and it seems like I do just notice the times that fit my theory.
It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye. Then it's fun and games without depth perception.
((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))
The parent is noting that if you plug in 5*(pi) into F, you get sin(5*(pi)/10), which equals sin((pi)/2), which equals 1. The problem occurs when you evaluate this part: 1/(1-sin(F/10)), because you get 1/(1-1), which is 1/0, and division by 0 is prohibited.
If you go back to the original statement, Murphy was stating an obvious and mathematically provable fact.
...), you need a backup plan because there is a good probability that *something* will eventually go wrong. (If something eventually goes perfect, do don't need to plan for it).
When you design something like a bridge, there is a possibility that some improbable even (like an earthquake or hurricane) can bring down the bridge. There's also a probability that there will be moments when the wind and water will be still, the ground will be stable, and no traffic will go on the bridge for days at a time. The first case stresses the bridge past it's limits. The second case removes all additional stress from the bridge.
When you design a bridge, you really don't care about the second case since all you care about is that the bridge is still standing and is functional. You need to care about the worst case because if it happens, lives and billions of dollars are at stake.
So basically Murphy said, if some event can happen (e.g. 9/11 or a pandemic or "the big one" earthquake or
How is this unreasonable?
Don't you like it when maths back up common sense ?
The equation in the post is a model---an invention for the purposes of prediction and description. It's effectively a mathematical restatement of common sense insights and (hopefully) statistical tendencies derived from psychological and economic studies. So to say that this work backs up common sense is missing the point to some extent: most of the meat was there first as common sense, and the math just expresses it more precisely and more in keeping with observed data.
Note that F=ma and the rest of Newton's laws also form a model in the same way that this equation does. What made them so revolutionary was that the ideas behind the models were very powerful, making the models themselves extremely accurate. We'll have to wait and see whether this Murphy's Law model is backed by similarly potent insights.
--Tom
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