Letter: Letters: Murphy's Law

From IAN FELLS

Your correspondent, Colin Morgan, (4 June) proffers an explanation
as to why toast falls butter side down when it is edged off the table under
rather special circumstances. In 1991 we broadcast a TV programme, ‘Murphy’s
Law’ on BBC₁ in which we tested a variety of manifestations of
the law including ‘the other queue always moves faster, even if you change
queues.’

Using very careful statistical tests we could find no evidence for the
truth of Murphy’s Law. For example, the bread fell butter side up, 148 times
and down 152. But then we realised that Murphy’s Law was acting on our experiments
to frustrate them by arranging statistics so that it appeared that Murphy’s
Law did not hold.

To achieve success in any engineering venture it is best to assume Murphy’s
Law operates at all times: ‘If anything can go wrong, it will.’

Ian Fells University of Newcastle upon Tyne