Sod's Law (Murphy's Law)

Times Online - Britain
A psychologist, a mathematician and an economist, commissioned by British Gas, have come up with this formula:

((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10)).

The keys are: urgency (U), complexity (C), importance (I), skill (S) and frequency (F). Each is given a score between one and nine. A sixth, aggravation (A), was set at 0.7 by the experts after a poll of the experiences of 1,000 respondents.

The project psychologist, Dr David Lewis, said: “To cut the seemingly unbeatable sod’s law gremlins down to size, you need to change one of the elements in the equation. So, if you haven’t got the skill to do something important, leave it alone.”


The sure fire way to calculate the chances of something going wrong. Nothing whatsoever to do with the new British Gas advertising campaign. Ho ho.