Arthur Bloch: Murphy's Law

Murphology

Murphy's Law

If anything can go wrong, it will.

Corollaries:

Nothing is as easy as it looks.
Everything takes longer than you think.
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 you eliminate four possible causes of trouble, a fifth will promptly appear.
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
Every solution breeds new problems.

Chisholm's Second Law

When things are going well, something will go wrong in the very near future.

Corollaries:

When things just can't get any worse, in the very near future they will get worse still.
If things seem to be improving, you have overlooked something.

Chisholm's Third Law

Any proposal will be understood differently by people than by the one who proposed it.

Corollaries:

Even if your explanation is so clear that it prevents any misinterpretation, someone will still understand you wrong.
If you are sure that your action will meet with everybody's approval, somebody will definitely dislike it.

Scott's First Law

No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.

Finagle's First Law

If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

Finagle's Third Law

In any collection of data, the figure that is most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.

Finagle's Fourth Law

Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.

Ehrman's Commentary on Ginsberg's Theorem

Things will get worse before they get better.
Who said things were going to get better?!

Everitt's Second Law of Thermodynamics

Confusion in society is always increasing. Only through very persistent effort can it be diminished somewhat. However, that very attempt will result in an increase in total confusion.

Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics

Things get worse under pressure.

Pudder's Law

Anything that begins well, ends badly. Anything that begins badly, ends worse.

Stockmayer's Theorem

If it looks easy, it will definitely be tough. If it looks tough, it is damn well impossible.

Boyarsky's Corollary

Any job is absolutely impossible to complete.

Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving System Dynamics

Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a larger can.

Applied Murphology

Booker's Law

An ounce of application is worth a ton of theory.

Klipstein's Laws Applied:

to Engineering:

Your patent application will inevitably be a week later than a similar application filed by someone else.
Firmness of delivery dates is always inversely proportional to the tightness of the schedule.
Any wire cut to length will be too short.

and to Manufacturing:

Tolerances will accumulate unidirectionally toward maximum difficulty of assembly.
If a project requires $N$ components, there will be $N-1$ units in stock.
A motor will rotate in the wrong direction.
A fail-safe circuit will destroy others.
A device protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect that fuse by blowing first.
A flaw will not appear until after the final inspection of the device has passed.
After the last of 16 holding screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.
After an access cover has been secured by 16 holding screws, it will be discovered that the gasket was forgotten inside.
After an assembly is completed, extra parts will be found on the bench.

Universal Laws for Young Engineers, Compiled by the Committee on Practical Recommendations of the International Association of Philosophical Engineers

Any error that can creep into a calculation, will.
Any error in any calculation will aim to cause the greatest damage.
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from engineering handbooks) are to be treated as variables.
The most vital dimension on any diagram or drawing has the greatest chance of being omitted.
If a prototype works flawlessly, all subsequent units will malfunction.
The request for changes that are absolutely essential to the device always arrives after its manufacture is nearly complete.
Parts that simply cannot be assembled incorrectly will, nevertheless, be assembled incorrectly.
All delivery promise dates must be multiplied by a factor of 2.0.
Device technical specifications provided by the manufacturer must be multiplied by a factor of 0.5.
Customer expectations of a new machine must be multiplied by a factor of 0.25.
Any device requiring setup and adjustment usually defies both.
If more than one person is responsible for a miscalculation, no one will be at fault.
Identical units tested in an identical manner will behave completely differently in the field.

Atwood's Corollary

People only borrow and fail to return the books you treasure the most.

Johnson's Third Law

The issue of the magazine you lost contains the exact article, story, or novel excerpt you urgently wanted to read.

Corollary:

None of your friends had that issue, or else they lost it, or threw it away.

Harper's Magazine Law

You cannot find a thing until you have bought a replacement for it.

Richard's Rules of Interdependence

Whatever you keep long enough can be thrown away. As soon as you throw something away, you will need it.

Airplane Law

When your flight is late, the connecting flight you wanted to catch leaves on time.

First Law of Bicycling

No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind!

First Law of Bridge

It's always your partner's fault.

Law of Feline Inevitability

As soon as the cat stretches out and starts falling asleep on your lap, you urgently need to get up and go, say, to the bathroom.

Johnson-Laird's Law

Toothaches usually begin on Friday night.

Ettore's Observation

The other line always moves faster.

Boob's Law

You always find what you lost in the last pocket you look in.

The Art of Design

First Law of Revision

Information leading to a mandatory design change will reach the author of the design if and only if the drawings are already completed.

Corollary:

In simple cases, where an obviously right way and an obviously wrong way are apparent, it is often wiser to choose the wrong way in order to get a jump start on the inevitable revisions.

Second Law of Revision

The more harmless a modification appears at first glance, the greater its influence will be down the line and the more drawings will have to be revised.

Law of the Lost Inch

In design work, no overall dimension can ever be accurately established after 4:40 PM on a Friday.

Corollary

The correct result will be self-evident at 9:01 A.M. on Monday.

The Law of Applied Confusion

The part that the factory forgot to supply accounts for 75% of the shipment. Upon investigation, you will easily discover that not only did the factory forget to ship it, but 50% of the time they weren't even producing it at all.

Corollaries

A truck delivery that normally takes one day will take five days if you are waiting for that particular truck.
After adding two weeks to the scheduled delivery date for unforeseen delays, add another two weeks for the unpredictability of the unforeseen delays themselves.

Vyszkowski's Theorem

Regardless of the units of measurement used by the supplier or buyer, the manufacturer will use their own arbitrary units, converted to the supplier's or buyer's units via strange and unnatural conversion factors.

SNAFU Equations

In a problem with N equations, there will be N+1 unknowns.
The most necessary item or the most necessary bit of information will be the least accessible.
As soon as you have exhausted all possible methods of solution without finding a suitable one, a solution will instantly emerge that is simple and obvious to everyone else.

Miksch's Law

If a rope has one end, it must have another.

Laws of Computer Programming

Any running program is obsolete.
Any program costs more and takes more time than anticipated.
If a program is completely debugged, it will have to be modified.
Any program expands to occupy all available memory.
The value of a program is directly proportional to the weight of its printout.
The complexity of a program grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer.

Troutman's Postulates of Programming

The most glaring error will only be revealed once the program has been in production for at least six months.
Control punch cards that cannot be put in the wrong order will be shuffled.
If a special person is assigned to monitor the integrity of input data, an ingenious idiot will come along and invent a way for incorrect data to pass through that check.
Profanity is the one language that absolutely all programmers speak with complete fluency.

Gilb's Laws of Unreliability

Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
Any system that depends on human reliability is unreliable.
The number of errors that cannot be detected is infinite, in contrast to the number of detectable errors, which is finite by definition.
Investments in improving reliability will continue until they exceed the cost of inevitable errors, or until someone demands that some useful work actually be done.

Brooks' Law

Adding manpower to a late software project only makes it later.

Golub's Laws of Computerdom

A carelessly planned project takes three times longer than expected; a carefully planned project takes only twice as long.
A project team detests weekly progress reports because they testify all too clearly to the absence of progress.

Shaw's Principle

Build a system that a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

The Art of Machinery

The IBM Principle

A machine should work; a human should think.

The Law of Nature's Perversity

You cannot properly determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.

The Law of Selective Gravitation

An object will fall in such a manner as to cause the greatest damage.

Jenning's Corollary

The probability of a slice of bread falling buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

Klipstein's Corollary

The most delicate component will be dropped.

Anthony's Workshop Law

Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner of the workshop.

Corollary

On its way into the corner, it will first strike your toes.

The Spare Parts Principle

When searching for small spare parts dropped from the workbench, the probability of finding them is directly proportional to the size of the part and inversely proportional to its importance for completing the job.

Paul's Law

You can't fall off the floor.

Watson's Law

The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the number and status of the persons watching it.

Vyszkowski's Second Law

Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough.

Lowery's Law

If it jams — force it. If it breaks, don't worry: it needed replacing anyway...

Schmidt's Law

If you mess with a machine long enough, it will break.

Fudd's First Law of Opposition

Push something heavy enough, and it will tip over.

Anthony's Law of Force

Don't strain yourself — get a bigger hammer!

Horner's Postulate

Experience grows directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.

Cahn's Axiom

When all else fails, read the manual!

The Art of Scientific Research

Murphy's Law of Scientific Research

Enough research can always be conducted in defense of one's theory.

Maier's Law

If the facts do not support the theory, they must be disposed of.

Corollaries

The more wordy a theory is, the better.
An experiment can be considered successful if no more than 50% of the measurements made have to be discarded to achieve conformity with the theory.

Eddington's Theory

The number of hypotheses explaining a given phenomenon is inversely proportional to the amount of knowledge about it.

The Fourth Law of Revision

No matter how painstakingly and carefully you prepare a sample, you can always be told that it is incorrect and inapplicable to the problem at hand.

The Rule of Accuracy

When working toward the solution of a problem, it is always helpful to know the answer.

Young's Law

All great discoveries are made by mistake.

Hoare's Law of Large Problems

Inside every large problem, there is a small problem struggling to get out.

Fett's Law of the Lab

Never attempt to repeat a successful experiment.

Cooper's Law

If you do not understand a certain word in a technical text, ignore it. The text retains its full meaning without it.

Parkinson's Sixth Law

The progress of science is inversely proportional to the number of published journals.

The Big Picture Principle

Scientists are so thoroughly buried in their own fields that they fail to see any phenomenon as a whole, including their own research.

Meskimen's Law

There is never enough time to do a job right, but there is always time to do it over.

Hierarchology

Heller's Law

The first myth of management science is that it exists.

Johnson's Corollary

Nobody really knows what is going on within any given organization.

The Peter Principle

In any hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

Corollaries

In time, every post will be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.
Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

Peter's Inversion

Internal consistency is valued more than efficient work.

Godin's Hidden Postulate to Peter's Principle

Every employee begins at his own level of incompetence.

Peter's Observation

Super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence.

Peter's Law of Evolution

Competence always contains the seed of incompetence.

Peter's Law of Substitution

Look after the flies, and the elephants will look after themselves.

Peter's Placebo

An ounce of reputation is worth a pound of work.

Vail's Axiom

In any organization, work gravitates toward the lowest level of the hierarchy.

Imhoff's Law

Any bureaucratic organization is like a septic tank: the really big chunks always rise to the top...

Parkinson's Third Law

Expansion means complexity, and complexity decay.

Parkinson's Fourth Law

The number of people in a working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work that needs to be done.

Parkinson's Fifth Law

If there is a way to delay making an important decision, a true civil servant will always find it.

Parkinson's Axioms

An official seeks to increase the number of subordinates, not rivals.
Officials create work for each other.

Cornuelle's Law

Management tends to assign work to those least capable of doing it.

Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor

People are always willing to do a job when the need for it has already passed.

The Law of Communications

The inevitable result of expanding communications between different levels of a hierarchy is an ever-widening area of misunderstanding.

Spark's Ten Rules for the Project Manager

Strive to look as tremendously important as possible.
Make sure you are seen in the company of important people.
Speak with confidence and rely only on obvious facts.
Do not engage in arguments. If you find yourself in a tight spot, ask a completely irrelevant question and, while your opponent tries to figure out what is happening, quickly change the subject.
Listen intently when others discuss a problem. This will give you the opportunity to pounce on some banal remark and destroy your rival.
If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, stare at him as if he has lost his mind. When he looks away, ask him his own question right back.
Receive generous funding in good health, but never make it public.
Whenever you leave the office, always walk briskly, as if you are in a great hurry. This will spare you from questions from both subordinates and superiors.
Keep your office door closed. This will deter visitors from barging in and create the impression that you are always holding important meetings.
Give all orders verbally. Never leave records or documents that could be used against you.

Jay's First Law of Leadership

Being able to change the status quo is the primary quality of a leader. Changing it before others do is the sure mark of a creative personality.

Match's Aphorism

A fool occupying a high post is like a man on top of a mountain: everything looks small to him, and he looks small to everyone else.

H. L. Mencken's Law

Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach.

Martin's Extension

Those who cannot teach, manage.

The Army Axiom

Any order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.

Jones' Law

A man who can smile during a failure is undoubtedly thinking about whom he can pin the blame on for the next one.

Old and Kahn's Law

The efficiency of a meeting is inversely proportional to the number of participants and the time spent.

The Second Law of Committee Dynamics

The less pleasure you derive from attending a meeting, the more likely it is that you will have to participate in it.

Hendrickson's Law

If a problem requires a great number of meetings, the meetings will eventually become more important than the problem itself.

Falkland's Rule

When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make one.

The First Law of Debate

Never argue with a fool—people might not notice the difference between you.

Swipple's Rule of Order

He who shouts loudest is given the floor.

Rayburn's Rule

If you want to live in harmony, agree.

Patton's Law

A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.

The Art of Being an Accountant

Parkinson's First Law

Work expands to fill all the time allocated for it; its importance and complexity grow in direct proportion to the time spent on its completion.

Parkinson's Second Law

Expenditures rise to meet income.

Parkinson's Law of Delay

"Let's put it off" is the deadliest form of denial.

Westheimer's Rule

To estimate how much time a job will take: take the time you think it needs, multiply by 2, and replace the units of measurement with units of the next higher order. Thus, we allocate two days for a one-hour task.

Graham's Law

Trivial matters are settled quickly; important ones are never settled.

Gray's Law of Programming

"N+1" simple tasks are scheduled to be completed in the same amount of time as "N" such tasks.

Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law

"N+1" simple tasks take twice as much time as "N" such tasks.

The 90-90 Rule of Project Schedules

The first 90% of the work takes 10% of the time, and the remaining 10% takes the other 90% of the time.

The Ordering Principle

Everything needed for yesterday's experiment must be ordered no later than tomorrow at lunchtime.

Cheops' Law

Nothing is ever built on schedule or within budget.

The Extended Epstein-Heisenberg Principle

In the field of research and development, only two out of three parameters can ever be defined simultaneously:

If the goal and the time to achieve it are set, one cannot guess how much it will cost.
If time and resources are limited, it is impossible to predict what portion of the task will be completed.
If the research goal is clearly defined and a specific sum of money is allocated, it is impossible to predict when this goal will be achieved.
If you are lucky enough to determine all three parameters precisely, it means you are not dealing with research and development at all!

O'Brien's Principle

An auditor will always reject an expense account if the final total is divisible by 5 or 10.

Issawi's Observation on the Consumption of Paper

Every system has its own way of consuming an endless amount of paper: in one, gigantic report forms are filled out in quadruplicate; in another, enormous advertisements are plastered everywhere and every trifle is wrapped in four-layer bags.

Jouhani's Law

A compromise is always more expensive than any of the alternatives.

The Art of Being an Expert

Weinberg's Corollary

A qualified specialist is a person who successfully avoids small mistakes while steadily moving toward some grand delusion.

Potter's Law

The volume of advertising hype surrounding a product is inversely proportional to its actual value.

Ross's Law

Do not characterize the importance of a stated idea in advance.

Clarke's Law of Revolutionary Ideas

Every radical idea—in science, politics, art—evokes three stages of reaction:

'It's impossible, and don't waste my time!'
'It may be so, but really, it's not worth bothering with...'
'I said it was a great idea all along!'

Clarke's First Law

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Clarke's Second Law

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture past them into the impossible.

Rule of the Great

When someone you greatly admire and respect is immersed in especially deep thoughts, they are most likely thinking about lunch.

Law of Seniority

The first draft of a more general principle is always more imperfect than a well-thought-out version of a more specific principle.

Runamok's Law

There are 4 types of people:

those who sit quietly and do nothing;
those who talk about sitting quietly and doing nothing;
those who do;
those who talk about what needs to be done.

Levy's Eighth Law

No amount of talent can overcome a penchant for details.

Segal's Law

A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with several watches is never sure.

Miller's Law

You can't tell how deep a puddle is until you step into it.

Weiler's Law

Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it themselves.

Weinberg's Second Law

If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker that flew along would destroy civilization.

The Art of Being Human

Cole's Axiom

The total sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant, and the population is growing...

First Law of Socio-Genetics

A penchant for bachelorhood is not hereditary.

Jones's Motto

Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.

Rule Five

You take yourself too seriously.

Metalaws (Universal Laws)

Pirsig's Postulate

The number of rational hypotheses explaining any given phenomenon is infinite.

Lilly's Metalaw

All laws are simulations of reality.

Principle of the Final Result

By definition: when you investigate the unknown, you do not know what you will find.

Cooper's Metalaw

New laws create new loopholes.

Hartley's First Law

It's not hard to lead a horse to water. But if you can make it float on its back—now that means you've achieved something!

Weaver's Law

When several business travelers share a taxi, the one sitting in the front seat pays for everyone.

Doyle's Corollary

Regardless of how many business travelers shared the taxi and who paid, each will claim the full taxi fare on their expense report.

Law of Innovation

If you want a team to win the high jump, find one person who can jump seven feet, not seven people who can jump one foot.

Trischmann's Paradox

A pipe gives a wise man time to think, and a fool something to put in his mouth.

Hansen's Comment on Man

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he picks himself up and briskly carries on.

Haldane's Law

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.