Talk:Littlewood's law

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This is good but a reply might be: Job 5v9 (NIV)

"He (God) performs wonders that cannot be fathomed,miracles that cannot be counted."

A single monthly miracle set into the pattern of creation seems about right. Cosnahang 09:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Definition?

Littlewood's Law supposes these miracles to happen individually? Perhaps a more in depth explanation is due, seems like questionable math to me. I'd also be interested in hearing some examples of these so-called miracles if Littlewood acknowledges their existence.

Caarth 06:01, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Er ...

Are we meant to take the "law" entirely seriously? To me it sounds like a po-faced joke. "Average person experiences around 100,800,000 things (or whatever) a month", my aunt Fanny! I can't find a suitable reference for this, but I reckon Littlewood was having a laugh. Garrick92 13:32, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Piffle

This particular rendering of Littlewoods law is seriously flawed. The only way to make it can make sense is to say: 'If a person makes 1 prediction (of an event with a 1 in a million probability) every second for 35 days, then they will probably be right once' Deglog 20:19, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I have a v v bad headcold at the moment, so I may have hallucinated this. 1) 60 (seconds) x 60 x 24 x 35 (days) ~= 3,000,000; 2) 1: 1,000,000 < 3,000,000 by a factor of three, obviously; 3) So the upshot of this is that if you make three million predictive guesses at odds of a million-to-one, then it's probable (i.e., better than evens) that you'll be right on one of them. Am I missing some dramatic subtlety here? Isn't this a "law" akin to saying that "Nice Things Are Better Than Nasty Things"? Garrick92 11:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

There should be a critique on this page, the definition of miracle is flawed. Littlewood makes the assumption based on his own particular reasoning that a miracle is any event that has a one in million chance of occuring. I don't know how widespread this view is, but it seems to me that the generally accepted view of a miracle is completely unexplainable and arguably illogical event. obvious examples would include raising the dead, levitation, disease disapearing without any scientific explanation etc.Colin 8 19:19, 9 March 2007 (UTC)