The probability theory

[Instar]

Actually, what Ive heard is that Murphy (the scientist himself) is widely misquoted. He actually said (Ive heard) that if there are two ways of doing something, and one is wrong, someone will do it.

[couslee]

Originally posted by tbontob:

quote:

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Originally posted by Grandpa Kim:
Harumph! Murphy was an optimist!

IIRC Murphy's law is "If anything can go wrong, it will."

Now that is pessimism in spades. And you say he is an optimist?

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I completly understood Garndpa Kim. if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong four, five times in a row. If something is going to go wrong, you have no chance of it going right. Murphy said "IF" something.... I say there is no "IF" about it. it will. Murphy was an optimist.

[Baron Munchausen]

As with everything else, Google provides an answer...

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The following article was excerpted from The Desert Wings
March 3, 1978

Murphy's Law ("If anything can go wrong, it will") was born at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949 at North Base.

It was named after Capt. Edward A. Murphy, an engineer working on Air Force Project MX981, (a project) designed to see how much sudden deceleration a person can stand in a crash.

One day, after finding that a transducer was wired wrong, he cursed the technician responsible and said, "If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it."

The contractor's project manager kept a list of "laws" and added this one, which he called Murphy's Law.

Actually, what he did was take an old law that had been around for years in a more basic form and give it a name.

Shortly afterwards, the Air Force doctor (Dr. John Paul Stapp) who rode a sled on the deceleration track to a stop, pulling 40 Gs, gave a press conference. He said that their good safety record on the project was due to a firm belief in Murphy's Law and in the necessity to try and circumvent it.

Aerospace manufacturers picked it up and used it widely in their ads during the next few months, and soon it was being quoted in many news and magazine articles. Murphy's Law was born.

The Northrop project manager, George E. Nichols, had a few laws of his own. Nichols' Fourth Law says, "Avoid any action with an unacceptable outcome."

The doctor, well-known Col. John P. Stapp, had a paradox: Stapp's Ironical Paradox, which says, "The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle."

Nichols is still around. At NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, he's the quality control manager for the Viking project to send an unmanned spacecraft to Mars.

[Kamog]

Murphy's Laws:

- If anything can go wrong, it will
- If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong
- If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then
- If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop
- Corollary: It will be impossible to fix the fifth fault, without breaking the fix on one or more of the others
- Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse
- If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something
- Nature always sides with the hidden flaw
- Corollary: The hidden flaw never stays hidden for long.
- The Murphy Philosophy: Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse.
- Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value
- Murphy's Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support whatever theory.
- Research supports a specific theory depending on the amount of funds dedicated to it.
- In nature, nothing is ever right. Therefore, if everything is going right ... something is wrong.
- It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
- Nothing is as easy as it looks.
- Everything takes longer than you think.
- If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
- Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
- Every solution breeds new problems.
- The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance.
- Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value
- You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
- The chance of the buttered side of the bread falling face down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
- A falling object will always land where it can do the most damage.
- A shatterproof object will always fall on the only surface hard enough to crack or break it.
- A paint drip will always find the hole in the newspaper and land on the carpet underneath (and will not be discovered until it has dried).
- A dropped power tool will always land on the concrete instead of the soft ground (if outdoors) or the carpet (if indoors) - unless it is running, in which case it will fall on something it can damage (like your foot).
- If a dish is dropped while removing it from the cupboard, it will hit the sink, breaking the dish and chipping or denting the sink in the process.
- A valuable dropped item will always fall into an inaccessible place (a diamond ring down the drain, for example) - or into the garbage disposal while it is running.
- If you pick up a chunk of broken concrete and try to pitch it into an adjacent lot, it will hit a tree limb and come down right on the driver's side of your car windshield.
- The greater the value of the rug, the greater the probability that the cat will throw up on it.
- You will always find something in the Last place you look.
- If you're looking for more than one thing, you'll find the most important one Last.
- After you bought a replacement for something you've lost and searched for everywhere, you'll find the original.
- No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.
- The other line always moves faster.
- In order to get a loan, you must first prove you don't need it.
- Anything you try to fix will take longer and cost you more than you thought.
- If you fool around with a thing for very long you will screw it up.
- If it jams - force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
- When a broken appliance is demonstrated for the repairman, it will work perfectly.
- Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will use it.
- Everyone has a scheme for getting rich that will not work.
- In any hierarchy, each individual rises to his own level of incompetence, and then remains there.
- Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral or fattening.
- If you want something bad enough, chances are you won't get it.
- If you think you are doing the right thing, chances are it will back-fire in your face.
- Just when you think things cannot get any worse, they will.
- Any time you put an item in a "safe place", it will never be seen again.
- Your best golf shots always occur when playing alone.
- The worst golf shots always occur when playing with someone you are trying to impress.
- The fish are always biting....yesterday!
- You will never leave a parking space without someone in an adjacent space leaving at the same time.
- Great ideas are never remembered and dumb statements are never forgotten.
- The clothes washer/dryer will only eat one of each pair of socks.
- When you see light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel will cave in.
- The light at the end of the tunnel is a train
- Whatever you want, you can't have, what you can have, you don't want.
- Whatever you want to do, is not possible, whatever is possible for you to do, you don't want to do it.
- Traffic is inversely proportional to how late you are, or are going to be.
- The complexity and frustration factor is inversely proportional to how much time you have left to finish, and how important it is.
- The probability of being observed is in direct proportion to the stupidity of ones actions
- If you say something, and stake your reputation on it, you will lose your reputation.
- Murphy's Law Current Revision: Any thing that can go wrong, HAS Already Gone Wrong! You just haven't been notified.
- If many things can go wrong, they will all go wrong at the same time.
- If anything was worth doing, it would've already been done.
- Corollary: Nothing is worth doing.
- Ants will always infest the nearest food cupboard.
- Hunter's Corollary to Murphy's Law: Things always go from bad to worse.
- Paper is always strongest at the perforation.
- Things are never as good as they are bad.
- The mud that won't come off on the doormat immediately adheres to the carpet.
- When you wear new shoes for the first time, everyone will step on them.
- If all else fails, hit it with a big hammer.
- When something goes wrong, you cannot find the solution in the instruction booklet, but someone else always does.
- You will find an easy way to do it, after you've finished doing it.
- Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you think, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
- Window polishing: It's always on the other side.
- Hall's Law: Anyone who isn't paranoid simply isn't paying attention.
- (Another) Hall's Law: Minor problem isn't.
- A valuable falling in a hard to reach place will be exactly at the distance of the tip of your fingers.
- If a valuable falls in a hard to reach place at a distance shorter than the tip of your finger, as soon as you try to reach it you'll push it to that distance.
- The probability of rain is inversely proportional to the size of the umbrella you carry around with you all day.
- Behind every little problem there's a larger problem, waiting for the little problem to get out of the way.
- When you really need something, its either not available, or can't be found. When you don't need it, its either available, or lays around in plain sight.
- Law of Conservation of Filth: In order for something to get clean, something else must get dirty.
- Conclusion to the Law of Conservation of Filth: It is possible for everything to get dirty and nothing to get clean.
- The file you are looking for is always at the bottom of the largest pile.
- Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
- The likelihood of something happening is in inverse proportion to the desirability of it happening.
- If the truth is in your favor no one will believe you.
- When things go from bad to worse, the cycle repeats.
- Key to happiness is to be O.K. with not being O.K.
- The two most abundant things in all the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
- If you plan for something to go wrong, and it doesn't go wrong, it would have been ultimately profitable for it to go wrong.
- The difference between Stupidity and Genius is that Genius has its limits.
- Anything that seems right, is putting you into a false sense of security.
- If everything seems great, its already gone wrong.
- The only time you're right, is when it's about being wrong.
- The only times something's right, is when everyone agrees its wrong.
- Its never so bad it couldn't be worse.
- If for some reason Murphy's Law fails to operate, it is building up for something big.
- Nothing ever gets better.
- Someone else always seems to get the credit for your work.
- The harder you work the more people there will be to claim credit except when it backfires.
- You get all the credit for the dumb move.

[tbontob]

Kamog

Where did you get all these.

[Kamog]

Originally posted by tbontob:
Kamog

Where did you get all these.

I got all of them from this site:

www.murphys-laws.com

There's tons of more Murphy's Laws on this site, way more than the ones posted below. There are many different categories such as Love, Tech, Computers, Commerce, Teaching, War, etc and each Category has lots of Murphy's Laws for that topic. I haven't read all of them, there's so many!