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Littlewood's law states that a person can expect to experience events with odds of one in a million (referred to as a "
miracle
A miracle is an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific lawsOne dictionary define"Miracle"as: "A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divi ...
") at the rate of about one per month. It was framed by British mathematician
John Edensor Littlewood
John Edensor Littlewood (9 June 1885 – 6 September 1977) was a British mathematician. He worked on topics relating to analysis, number theory, and differential equations, and had lengthy collaborations with G. H. Hardy, Srinivasa Ramanu ...
.
History
The law was framed by
Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...
Professor
John Edensor Littlewood
John Edensor Littlewood (9 June 1885 – 6 September 1977) was a British mathematician. He worked on topics relating to analysis, number theory, and differential equations, and had lengthy collaborations with G. H. Hardy, Srinivasa Ramanu ...
, and published in a 1986 collection of his work, ''
A Mathematician's Miscellany
''A Mathematician's Miscellany'' is an autobiography and collection of anecdotes by John Edensor Littlewood. It is now out of print but ''Littlewood's Miscellany'' is its successor, published by Cambridge University Press and edited by Béla Bollo ...
''. It seeks among other things to debunk one element of supposed
supernatural phenomenology and is related to the more general
law of truly large numbers
The law of truly large numbers (a statistical adage), attributed to Persi Diaconis and Frederick Mosteller, states that with a large enough number of independent samples, any highly implausible (i.e. unlikely in any single sample, but with const ...
, which states that with a sample size large enough, any outrageous (in terms of probability model of single sample) thing is likely to happen.
Description
Littlewood defines a miracle as an exceptional event of special significance occurring at a frequency of one in a million. He assumes that during the hours in which a human is awake and alert, a human will see or hear one "event" per second, which may be either exceptional or unexceptional. Additionally, Littlewood supposes that a human is alert for about eight hours per day.
As a result, a human will in 35 days have experienced under these suppositions about one million events. Accepting this definition of a miracle, one can expect to observe one miraculous event for every 35 days' time, on average – and therefore, according to this reasoning, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace.
See also
*
Coincidence
A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another. The perception of remarkable coincidences may lead to supernatural, occult, or paranormal claims, or it may lead t ...
*
Confirmation bias
*
Gambler's fallacy
*
List of eponymous laws
This list of eponymous laws provides links to articles on laws, principles, adages, and other succinct observations or predictions named after a person. In some cases the person named has coined the law – such as Parkinson's law. In other ...
*
Micromort
A micromort (from micro- and mortality) is a unit of risk defined as a one-in-a-million chance of death. Micromorts can be used to measure the riskiness of various day-to-day activities. A microprobability is a one-in-a million chance of some e ...
*
Orders of magnitude (probability)
*
Spurious relationship
In statistics, a spurious relationship or spurious correlation is a mathematical relationship in which two or more events or variables are associated but '' not'' causally related, due to either coincidence or the presence of a certain third, u ...
*
Synchronicity
Synchronicity (german: Synchronizität) is a concept first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl G. Jung "to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection." In contemporary research, synchronicity e ...
References
*''Littlewood's Miscellany'', edited by
B. Bollobás,
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer.
Cambridge University Pre ...
; 1986.
*''Debunked! ESP, Telekinesis, Other Pseudoscience'',
Georges Charpak
Georges Charpak (; born Jerzy Charpak, 1 August 1924 – 29 September 2010) was a Polish-born French physicist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992.
Life
Georges Charpak was born Jerzy Charpak to Jewish parents, Anna (Szapiro) and ...
and
Henri Broch
Henri is an Estonian, Finnish, French, German and Luxembourgish form of the masculine given name Henry.
People with this given name
; French noblemen
:'' See the 'List of rulers named Henry' for Kings of France named Henri.''
* Henri I de Montm ...
, translated from the French by
Bart K. Holland,
Johns Hopkins University Press.
External links
Littlewood's Lawdescribed in a review of ''Debunked! ESP, Telekinesis, Other Pseudoscience'' by
Freeman Dyson
Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was an English-American theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrices, mathematical formulation of quantum m ...
, in ''
The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'' {{paywall
Statistical laws
Probability theory paradoxes
Miracles
Skepticism