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 ?"

Another famous proof

[Anonymous Coward]

Women are evil [wisc.edu].

I don't believe it!

[barcodez]

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

Ugh

[mrjah]

Quick, somebody start arguing about probability!

Re:Bullcrap

[Anonymous Coward]

this is psuedo science at best. A scientific law should be provable by repetation. You can't know somehting will go wrong every time.

Ahh, but what if the "something" was your spelling, and "going wrong every time" referred to at least one error per sentence? Could we prove it then?

Re:Bullcrap

[TheMeuge]

Now that we've written down Murphy's law, here's a bunch of other laws we can write down mathematically. I + B*E^ANS = 3SHI/TS LOG(T + A) = G/00.D/(L^A/Y) and for the final one Undescribable life bitching + mathematical formulas = Utter bullshit

Fire up the laserjet!

[pair-a-noyd]

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.....

this has gotta be real...

[Malor]

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.

Hundreds!

[lazybeam]

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? :)

Asskissing gives you better results than hardwork!

[Anonymous Coward]

And from today's joke at thehun.com [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.

Re:Hundreds!

[NeoSkandranon]

I'd say aggrivation could be measured in slashdots

Re:Er...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it works that way. Here's another mathematical formula for you:

sense_of_humor(/. user 26199) = 0

Re:Er...

[nbvb]

<Carlin>
If you're looking for self help, why would you read a book written by somebody else?

That's not self help. That's help.

There's no such thing as self help. If you did it yourself, you didn't need help!
</Carlin>

so, aggravation is different from urgency

[nels_tomlinson]

((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))

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.

Re:Hundreds!

[PGillingwater]

> My friends love using quantifiers on values that can'be given a number:

> "I have hundreds of luck. HUNDREDS!"

I'm sorry, that's only three funny.

Re:equals

[miskatonic alumnus]

I don't see how this particular formula is testable. How does one quantify urgency or aggravation in order to test the model? Methinks they left out the most important variable, B for Bullshit, measured in metric tons. ;)

Re:Er...

[Coryoth]

The biggest dilemma is that this formula is just not testable. Clearly any test would be very Important and have to be carried out Frequently, and a test that covers all the situations to which Murphy's law might apply is clearly going to have to be Complex. So plugging all of that in, we see that, even if the formula is correct, all your attempts to verfiy it are doomed to failure!

Jedidiah.

Murphy's Law and Schroedinger's cat

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Murphy's Law that "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst possible time."

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."

And Dr. Lewis Is Always Right

[Baldrson]

Project psychologist Dr David Lewis said... "So, 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."

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."

Re:equals

[dougmc]

possibly even keyed to the multidimensional gravity vector of the iotas of info.

Impressive. Now just re-route the plasma through the deflector dish and create a static warp field, and we can make things just like they were 50 minutes ago and wrap this episode up!

Sod's Law = Murphy's Law

[starling]

Murphy's Law: If it can go wrong it will

Sod's Law: It will go wrong at the worst posible time.

And while we're on mathematical jokes...

[pjt33]

A mathematician, a psychologist and an economist

is clearly the lead into something like

were on a train travelling from Glasgow to Edinburgh when they saw a sheep. The psychologist said, "Look: Scottish sheep are black!" The economist replied, "Well, we can at least say that some Scottish sheep are black." At this the mathematician spoke up: "There exists at least one sheep in Scotland at least one side of which is black."

Re:Hundreds!

[General Ishmoo]

>> My friends love using quantifiers on values that can'be given a number:

>> "I have hundreds of luck. HUNDREDS!"

>I'm sorry, that's only three funny.

Apparently, so is your comment.

Re:Sod's Law NOT= Murphy's Law

[starling]

For example, the exclamation point key will stop working on a keyboard: Murphy's Law.

It'll do it when typing a subject into /. and completely reverse the subject's meaning: Sod's Law.

And yes, it really did stop working. Bugger.

S = 11

[Begemot]

It's the outstanding skills that makes your chances to get laid negative

Re:Apparantly not and many others like him don't g

[v01d]

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.

Re:Bullcrap

[pi_rules]

You can't know something will go wrong every time.

You sure about that?

You want my job?

Follow me around for a day. You'll change your tune.

A mathematician, a psychologist and an economist

[ccharles]

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 ./).

Will I get my coffee today?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Adjustment for short fuse

[knitterb]

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))

!!

Re:equals

[aonifer]

How does one quantify urgency

Fraction of bladder. 0 = bladder empty, no urgency. 1 = bladder full. Hoo boy, that's urgent.

Re:equals

[Doc Ruby]

I'd prefer to see it in terms of probabilistic unity, a decimal fraction. Then we can plug it into a good hot cup of tea, and blink across the multiverse. Trillian, I'm coming!

Re:And to avoid damaging the galaxies

[stienman]

You must be an engineer and a mathmatician.

Only an engineer would get something new and look for ways to break it.

Only a mathmatician could break it.

-Adam

Re:that is not a limit on math

[Lifthrasir]

all sheep are black on one side (the inside).

the problem is that if you open one up to have a look, it's not black anymore, mainly because your letting too much light in.

and i'm sure the sheep wouldn't be happy about being opened up either