Trying to add some precision to its meaning,
Mathematician J.E. Littlewood defined it as
"an event that has special significance when it occurs, but occurs with a
probability of one in a million."; what word is it?
Etymology, Etymology, and more Etymology
as well as grammar, usage, euphemism, slang, jargon, semantics (meaning), linguistics, neologism, idiom, word origin, syntax, dialect, lexicon (vocabulary), diction, pidgin, synonym, antonym, homonym, cant, argot, lingo, and redundancy.
The critically-acclaimed board game
MooT
consists of tough questions about the nuances of the English language.
Answer:
miracle
According to physicist Freeman
Dyson:
"The paradoxical feature of the laws of
probability is that they make unlikely events happen unexpectedly often.
A simple way to state the paradox is
Littlewood's Law of Miracles. Littlewood was a
famous mathematician who was teaching at Cambridge University when I was a
student. Being a professional mathematician, he defined miracles precisely
before stating his law about them.
He defined a
miracle as an event that has special
significance when it occurs, but occurs with a probability of one in a million.
This definition agrees with our common-sense understanding of the word
miracle.
Littlewood's
Law of Miracles states that in the course of any normal person's life, miracles
happen at a rate of roughly one per month.
The proof of
the law is simple. During the time that we are awake and actively engaged in
living our lives, roughly for eight hours each day, we see and hear things
happening at a rate of about one per second. So the total number of events that
happen to us is about thirty thousand per day, or about a million per month.
With few exceptions, these events are not miracles
because they are insignificant. The chance of a miracle is about one per
million events. Therefore we should expect about one miracle to happen, on the
average, every month."
[Note: The above passage was taken
from The New York Review of Books (Freeman Dyson
reviewing Debunked! ESP, Telekinesis, Other
Pseudoscience by Georges Charpak and Henri Broch)
You can read the review at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16991
Please note that these are draft questions for the board game MooT.
If you spot an error or disagree with anything I've said here,
please let me know and I'll fix it.
(the Mootguy)
Feedback
I get up at 6 am and go to bed at
12 am, I am awake for 18 hours not 8. Should I have miracles more often? The
calculation is all wrong, and I think that the whole law makes no sense at
all.
x-langlect_uol.com.ar
______________________________________________________________
I find Littlewood's endeavour unsatisfactory,
because it amounts to begging the question. Miracles are often associated with
divine providence ? the notion that god or gods interceded in human life to
make something unnatural occur.
Since god is but a
metaphysical postulate, a miracle cannot be the result of a rational action. it
therefore is little more than a synonym for an unexplainable random occurrence.
Consequently, the attempt to "prove" anything about a
miracle is fruitless.
x-gfelton_mediamonitors.org
______________________________________________________________
A miracle is an event contrary to the laws of nature. A god could
perform several miracles a day, and they would all be miracles. The frequency
shouldn't matter. Any rare event will eventually occur, but it is not
necessarily a miracle. It is even possible, although extremely unlikely, to be
dealt two royal flushes in a row, but it is not a miracle. I think Littlewood
is confusing probability with transgressions of the laws of nature.
x-dtalling_telus.net
______________________________________________________________
The description of "miracle" is tidy, but
insufficient. One connotation for "miracle" demands the presence of religion or
faith-based associations.
x-
artiezappa_yahoo.com
______________________________________________________________
For this to be true, one would have to "recognize" the event as having special
significance ... what if an event was specially significant to some but not to
others, does that mean it was not a miracle? Or, what if the event was a
commonplace event but you deem it to be specially significant to you on any
given day...is it still a miracle? Using this definition miracles are
subjective to interpretation...is that really the "common-sense" understanding
of the word?
x-jcalhoun_socal.rr.com
______________________________________________________________
If you are a believer, this doesn't hold water. Miracles happen
without a mathematical significance and happen as those who believe trust in a
higher being decides that a miracle needs to happen.
x-KAMyles123_aol.com
______________________________________________________________
Aside from the religious notion of a miracle ? which I personally
believe in ? and have received. One miracle a month ? is based on the
assumption that events only take a second.
Actually,
events could on average take say 10 minutes, and under the same mathematical
law ? that means one miracle every 10 years ? which altogether seems more
realistic. Does this mean that you could lotto once every 10 years ? no way ?
this that miracle is 1:100 million chance, so that would be once in a thousand
years, which means no hope, really.
x-john.shannon_eds.com
______________________________________________________________
Copyright 1998-2008 Blair Arts Ltd. All rights reserved.