January 07, 2005

How you can break Murphy's Law "There's grim news for people who worry that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. A new mathematical formula has proved Murphy's Law really does strike at the worst possible time."
posted by squidranch 19 years ago
  • A new mathematical formula has proved ... I've been out of the math game for a while, but last I knew it was theorems that proved stuff and not formulas. The point? When you have nothing to say, be pedantic.
  • I've been out of the math game for a while, but last I knew it was theorems that proved stuff and not formulas Hahahahah. Good point.
  • Why toast lands buttered side down: the butter makes that side more slippery.
  • This is effin' hilarious because as it stands the formula given is not a formula but an algebraic expression. This formula has fallen victim to Murphy's Law. I propose an alternate: P(&%^%&) {the probability of an utter f*ckup} approaches 1 as t increases. Where t proportional to: * the number of people watching * the number of people of the opposite sex watching * the number of times you've done said activity successfully in the past * the size of the bag of money on sucessful completion * your absolute urgent need to get it done. or something like this, but more so.
  • What does the opposite sex have to do with it? I think the reason murphy's law is so salient is because if something goes wrong at an okay time, its no problem. I don't necessarily believe that the chance of something going wrong is necessarily higher at a bad time, than it is at a good time. It's just more noticable.
  • Bees: I think toast falls butter side down because the butter makes the toast heavier on that side. That has to be the case--butter makes my butt heavier, why wouldn't it do the same to toast?
  • But how does this explain the buttered cat?
  • BlueHorse, I think we might try, in a spirit of experimentation, buttering both sides, and then see if the toast will start whirling like a gyroscope.
  • Or better yet, butter a Möbius toast.
  • It was a joke (though clearly a bad one), :-( alcarilinque.
  • Hey! I saw a TV program once about why the toast lands butter-side down. It's because it falls from a table. On the table it's butter-side up. Shove it off the table; it tips and starts to spin. It falls through 180 degrees of spin or so before it lands on the floor. If you shove buttered toast off a 6-foot stepladder, they demonstrated, it has enough time to fall through a 360 degree spin and land butter-side up again. Do they still have TV like that anymore?
  • Tomcat- Fucking fantastic story. As for Murphy's law, one, this top link is a bullshit bit o' story, as it doesn't prove anything (y'know, with experiments). Two, the idea that self-reporting can give accurate results is flawed form the outset. You remember when failures come during emergencies. You don't remember when failures come during irrelevant times because they're just that- irrelevant.
  • the buttered cat As seen here.