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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 ?"
Women are evil.
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.
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 anno.... 503 service unavailable
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this is psuedo science at best.
A scientific law should be provable by repetation. You can't know somehting will go wrong every time.
Quick, somebody start arguing about probability!
"from the brillaint-or-pathetic dept."
he knows this is BS too...
-Leav
I own a pump action golf ball cannon. I made it myself.
Better avoid a frequency of exactly 5*Pi.
"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!
Bumper sticker for me!
((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))
Yeah baby! Learn it, live it, love it!
Actually, this formula is my life story in a nutshell.....
Notice the foot? It's supposed to be a somewhat humorous little blurb about something silly.
What a fun crowd we've got around here on Sunday...
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
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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make install -not war
Since, after all, they included a sin() call. As everyone knows, it's not real math unless it includes a trigonometric function. And lots of parens. Gotta have lots of those.
Shame they didn't work in some of those cool Greek characters, though.
Experts at British Gas indeed. Why? How? No one is even telling us the quantity that is being calculated in this dubious formula.
If you don't know, guys, kindly don't pass it on. So far it's just noise. Here's a slightly better link, but still not, in my opinion, enough to bother with.
mt
My friends love using quantifiers on values that can'be given a number:
:)
"I have hundreds of luck. HUNDREDS!"
So, what are the units of urgency, complexity, importance, skill, frequency and aggravation?
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no sig for you. come back one year.
And from today's joke at thehun.com (link not work safe!!) ...
From a strictly mathematical viewpoint it goes like this:
What makes 100%?
What does it mean to give MORE than 100%?
Ever wonder about these people who say they are giving more than 100%?
We have all been to these meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%
How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life?
Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these question.
If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.
Then:
H A R D W O R K
8+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%
K N O W L E D G E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%
But:
A T T I T U D E
1+20+20++9+20+21+4+5 = 100%
And:
B U L L S H I T
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%
AND, Look how far ass kissing will take you.
A S S K I S S I N G
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%
So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that whilst hard work and knowledge will get you close, and attitude will get you there, it's the bullshit and ass kissing that will put you over the top.
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?
Statistically it might be possible to describe this properly, if such a relationship did in fact exist. The problem here is that all the variables seem to be ordinal values and they give no instructions on how to convert them into cardinal values in terms of their function. That makes it also quite interesting how they got the constatants. On the other hand would every properly derived formula suggest that the implied relationship does not exist. Then again that seems quite boring.
So, when we're trying to estimate the parameters, we take logs and get:
log(U+C+I) + log(10-S) - log20 + logA - log(1-sin(F/10))
That means that we can estimate the effects of skill, aggravation and frequency separately, but the effects of urgency, complexity and importance can't be separated from one another.
I'm pretty sure there's some deep, philosophical meaning to that.
See what I've been reading.
is what? The number of times per week something will go wrong? A probability function describing the frustration field in the vicinity of a piece of hardware? The length of the scientist's nose?
Where's the equals sign? Or comparison operator? Where's the other half of the equation?
It's cute that somebody's multiplied a bunch of parameters. But they haven't said (mathematically) what that means.
Murphy's law is a humorous observation at man's frustration with the universe. A mathematical descrption of Murphy's law would be scientific humor.
What was reported by NEWS.com.au (and repeated by
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
According to the article, it is indeed 1-sin(F/10).
If you were trying to use a trigonometric identity here, be aware that 1-(sin(x)^2) = cos(x)^2 is the correct one, not 1-sin(x) = cos(x),
Math pedants strike again!
Is actually an inverse corollary of the Schroedinger's cat equations:
"Anything that can go wrong, already has, but you won't observe it until the most critical time."
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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.
When asked why so many of his psychotherapy patients commit suicide, Dr. Lewis went on to say, "You're implying something went wrong. They would have become serial murderers or child rapists if I handn't helped them. Are you saying I should be aggravated over the outcome of having saved lives while protecting little children from molestation? If I didn't have the skills I have, you might not be standing here asking such questions, you Wanker."
Seastead this.
It's not, it's not the same thing as Sod's Law, and the law you're thinking of is Finagle's.
Ironicly, having it called Murphy's Law by a reporter from the Courier-Mail is an example of Murphy's Law.
Murphy's Law: If it can go wrong it will
Sod's Law: It will go wrong at the worst posible time.
((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.
For example, the exclamation point key will stop working on a keyboard: Murphy's Law.
/. and completely reverse the subject's meaning: Sod's Law.
It'll do it when typing a subject into
And yes, it really did stop working. Bugger.
It is a joke people. No need to question who did it or what school they went to or discuss the merits of trying to explain the nature of probability in a formula.
A FUCKING JOKE. If you need it simpler it is like the old "You can have it fast, good or cheap. Pick two" but with more braces.
Seriously read the comments. A lot just don't seem to get it at all. Those few who did. Thank god. All hope is not lost. To those who didn't go I recommend suicide. Make the world a happier place.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's the outstanding skills that makes your chances to get laid negative
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
MAN SHOOTS ROVER!
From:
women = (evil) ^ 2
Follows:
women = +/- evil
There are those of us who know and associate with women who possess negative evil.
I think the problem is that the joke isn't funny. Since one of the distinguishing traits of a joke is being funny, this joke is hard to recognize as a joke.
To those who find this joke funny, I recommend suicide. You're perverting the one thing that could make the world a happier place.
These factors are often multiplied together to result in a number that is used to prioritize the limited funds available to process improvement or maintenance.
These ideas are not new . . . they were developed by Japanese manufacturers and the US auto industry decades ago . . They are called Failure Modes and Effects Analyses. They are often used in conjunction with statisical process control efforts to reduce variability and downtime.
are trying to decide if girlfriends or wives are better.
./).
The economist says that wives are better because you have to spend more money on girlfriends.
The psychologist says that girlfriends are better because they make you feel younger.
The mathematician says that he prefers to have both. That way, his wife always thinks he's at his girlfriend's place, his girlfriend thinks he's at home, and he can go to the office and get some goddamn work done!
(Yes, I realize a joke about wives and girlfriends might be out of place on
Man will I get my coffee in this morning?
((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))
Urgency = yeah I'd give that a 50, I mean it's pretty urgent.
Complexity = it's pretty simple so a 1.
Importance = it's not important for my boss, but really important for me, so a 400.
Skill = well a child or drunk person might have problems, so it sounds like a 4.
Frequency = well, I'll probably want 2 cups today.
Aggravation = yeah I'll get really aggrivated without my coffee, so 100 is about right.
Let's see plug all those in:
((50 + 1 + 400) x (10 - 4)) / 20 x 100 X 1/(1 - sin(2/10))
bust out calc.exe and punch in the numbers right:
1.3482771486352022902422017615702
Alright now I'm rocking. There is 1.3482771486352022902422017615702 that I'll get my 2 cups of coffee today. Glad that's straightened out.
PS. I think magic 8 ball is faster.
INTERESTING ADDENDUM FROM RBL (first featured in RBL's KISS Guide to
Windows, 1999): http://rblevin.net
It's ironic. One of the world's favorite axioms on the inevitability of
failure is itself an example of such inevitability. It's Murphy's Law, most
often stated as "anything that can go wrong, will." The irony: That's not
Murphy's Law at all. It's "Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives," devised by
the famous science fiction author Larry Niven. The real Murphy's Law was
coined sometime around 1949 by USAF engineer Edward A. Murphy Jr.
Murphy was part of a team of USAF engineers working on a project that tested
the effects of extreme G-forces on the human body. One such test involved
mounting 16 sensors to 16 different parts of the test subject's body. Each
sensor could be connected in one of two ways: Correctly or incorrectly. On
the first run, a technician installed all 16 sensors backwards, after which
Murphy issued his now-famous maxim: "If there are two or more ways to do
something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone
will do it." Someone did, and now Finagle's Law is almost always misrepresented as Murphy's.
I have a short fuse, so:
((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))
should be rewritten as:
((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A^2 x 1/(1-sin(F/10))
!!
-bk
For those that didn't RTFM, the value for each variable should be on a scale of 1-9, with 9 being very high. A (aggrivation) should be 0.7 as set after the study. I put together something in PHP just to do the work for me. The biggest variable seems to be skill--with all others set to very high (9) it certainly "proves" that an idiot can totally screw stuff up.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Why should I take opposition to a joke? Because this humor defines what people what thought systems are practical. (It did for me.) Should I just accept that all the chaff in my biological thinking unit on some little mudball in the MilkyWay is superduper -- or should I strain at the leash of thought?
The hermetic nature of basic math is from a limitation of mathematicians, us, rather than math itself.
This year I finally caught the joke of the Einstein poster where he says, "Whatever you problems are with math I can assure you that mine are far greater." I think there are three types of human responses to that: think he meant he was bad at arithematic and was making fun, or to understand that he was grappling with the big chimeras, or to make the transition from the former state to the latter which is realization.
And I think I need to make up a joke to combat the sheep joke.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
For a fascinating read on the origins of Murphy's law, check out
9 /v 9i5/murphy/murphy0.html
http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume
I know you are being funny, but this is a real problem, not just in "social sciences", but also in medicine. How do you measure pain? If you can't, how do you test the efficacy of a given drug, or compare the effects of two drugs? Similarly with nausea, anxiety and a host of others. VAS (visual analogue scale) was developed and validated just for data like these. Also, look up Likert scale
Yes, I know the original article was tongue-in-cheek
>Apparantly not and many others like him don't /. home of the nerd/geek who
>get it either. Read the comments below and weep
>for what once was
>understood math jokes.
To be fair, though, we ought to recognize that as math jokes go, it's particularly badly constructed and not very funny. Understanding the joke in this case amounts to something rather like, "Oh - a nonsense formula which isn't even flushed out enough to be engaging. Guess it was meant to be a joke. Pity they didn't do more with it."
If one is going to go to the trouble of sending up a story in the papers, it's worth spending at least a few moments putting together something coherent. They could at least tell us what the formula is supposed to do (as written, it ain't a probability) and choose sane parameters. "Frequency" measured on a scale of 1 to 9 is silly without being quite silly enough to be funny on it's own.
Given a couple of hours, one could put together something really quite detailed and almost believable. Toss in amusing anecdotes about data collection and recommendations for government or military organizations, and it could be great fun. Start off with a few pages of just barely plausible stuff, and then dive into total absurdity at the end. Hell, one could even toss in *actual* data collected in some obviously crazy way and make an AIR-worthy article out of it.
If we're going to bemoan the decline of the geek slashdot reader, we had better include a lament for the geek prank story writer.