Apparently British Gas has commissioned research into the phenomenon known in polite circles as Murphy’s Law (though also known more appropriately as Sod’s Law). The law, in simple terms, dictates that “if anything can go wrong, it will.”
The report by Dr Leyser, Dr Lewis and Mr Obadya provides an equation to describe how to find out how likely Sod’s Law is to strike, using a rating system between 0 and 10, where you closer to 10 the event is, the more likely it is that bad luck will get you.
In order to find out how likely it is that the important file will disappear from the computer, or that you will spill a drink down your front before a date, the Sod’s Law rating (RSL) uses five factors (Urgency, Complexity, Importance, Skill and Frequency), each of which are rated between 0 and 9. A further factor of Aggravation is set at 0.7 based on a survey of over 1,000 people. The equation describes how these factors affect the event. Using the drink spilling as an example, you spill your drink on yourself before the date because you are more focused on what to wear and what time it is and so forget how to drink.
There is a footnote that states even this formula can fall victim to the very law that it sets out to quantify. If you judge your ratings incorrectly you could allow disaster to strike by being too optimistic, or even over-confident, which increases the Sod’s Law rating even further. Whether or not this report is real, it does bring home the point that generally if something can go wrong to annoy you, it will try it’s best to do so… Now, I better press the save button befo <MESSAGE TRUNCATED DUE TO TERMINAL ERROR>
[...] in the case that you need it running non-stop during your two week holiday. Added to this, Murphy’s Law dictates that despite having installed LogMeIn on your computer you will only ever need to access [...]