Untitled
The House Of Murphy
Murphy's home
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W
Waddell's Law of Equipment Failure:
A component's degree of reliability is directly proportional to its ease of accessibility (i.e., the harder it is to get to, the more often it breaks down).

Waffle's Law:
A professor's enthusiasm for teaching the introductory course varies inversely with the likelihood of his having to do it.

Wain's Conclusion:
The only people making money these days are the ones who sell computer paper.

Waldo's Observation:
One man's red tape is another man's system.

Walinsky's Law:
The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the number of participants.

Walinsky's First Law of Political Campaigns:
If there are twelve clowns in a ring, you can jump in the middle and start reciting Shakespeare, but to the audience, you'll just be the thirteenth clown.

Walker's Law:
Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve. Run with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be strengthened. Keep the company of bums and you will become a bum. Hang around with rich people and you will end by picking up the check and dying broke.

Wallace's Observation:
Everything is in a state of utter dishevelment.

Walters's Law of Management:
If you're already in a hole, there's no use to continue digging.

Washington's Law:
Space expands to house the people to perform the work that Congress creates.

Watson's Law:
The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the number and significance of any persons watching it.

Rule of the Way Out:
Always leave room to add an explanation if it doesn't work out.

Weaver's Law:
When several reporters share a cab on an assignment, the reporter in the front seat pays for all.
Corollary (O'Doyle): No matter how many reporters share a cab, and no matter who pays, each puts the full fare on his own expense account.
Corollary (Germond): When a group of newsmen go out to dinner together, the bill is to be divided evenly among them, regardless of what each one eats and drinks.

Weber-Fechner Law:
The least change in stimulus necessary to produce a perceptible change in response is proportional to the stimulus already existing.

Weidner's Queries:
  1. The tide comes in and the tide goes out, and what have you got?
  2. They say an elephant never forgets, but what's he got to remember?

Weiler's Law:
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.

Weinberg's Law:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
Corollary: An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

Weisman's Law of Examinations:
If you're confident after you've just finished an exam, it's because you don't know enough to know better.

Wells's Law:
A parade should have bands OR horses, not both.

Westheimer's Rule:
To estimate the time it takes to do a task: estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by 2, and change the unit of measure to the next highest unit. Thus we allocate 2 days for a one hour task.

Whispered Rule:
People will believe anything if you whisper it.

White Flag Principle:
A military disaster may produce a better postwar situation than victory.

White's Chappaquiddick Theorem:
The sooner and in more detail you announce bad news, the better.

White's Observations of Committee Operation:
  1. People very rarely think in groups; they talk together, they exchange information, they adjudicate, they make compromises. But they do not think; they do not create.
  2. A really new idea affronts current agreement.
  3. A meeting cannot be productive unless certain premises are so shared that they do not need to be discussed, and the argument can be confined to areas of disagreement. But while this kind of consensus makes a group more effective in its legitimate functions, it does not make the group a creative vehicle -- it would not be a new idea if it didn't -- and the group, impelled as it is to agree, is instinctively hostile to that which is divisive.

White's Statement:
Don't lose heartŠ
Owen's Comment on White's Statement: Š they might want to cut it outŠ
Byrd's Addition to Owen's Comment on White's Statement: Š and they want to avoid a lengthy search.

Whole Picture Principle:
Research scientists are so wrapped up in their own narrow endeavors that they cannot possibly see the whole picture of anything, including their own research.
Corollary: The Director of Research should know as little as possible about the specific subject of research he is administering.

Wicker's Law:
Government expands to absorb revenue, and then some.

Wilcox's Law:
A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the pants.

Williams and Holland's Law:
If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods.

Will's Rule of Informed Citizenship:
If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the Constitution. (It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's statecraft). Instead read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with titles beginning with the word "National".

Flip Wilson's Law:
You can't expect to hit the jackpot if you don't put a few nickles in the machine.

Wilson's Law of Demographics:
The public is not made up of people who get their names in the newspapers.

Wingo's Axiom:
All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing without thinking.

First Law of Wing-Walking:
Never leave hold of what you've got until you've got hold of something else.

Witten's Law:
Whenever you cut your fingernails, you will find a need for them an hour later.

Wober's SNIDE Rule (Satisfied Needs Incite Demand Excesses):
Ideal goals grow faster than the means of attaining new goals allow.

Wolf's Law (An Optimistic View of a Pessimistic World):
It isn't that things will necessarily go wrong (Murphy's Law), but rather that they will take so much more time and effort than you think if they are not to go wrong.

Wolf's Law of Decision-Making:
Major actions are rarely decided by more than four people. If you think a larger meeting you're attending is really "hammering out" a decision, you're probably wrong. Either the decision was agreed to by a smaller group before the meeting began, or the outcome of the larger meeting will be modified later when three or four people get together.

Wolf's Law of History Lessons:
Those who don't study the past will repeat its errors. Those who do study it will find OTHER ways to err.

Wolf's Law of Management:
The tasks to do immediately are the minor ones; otherwise, you'll forget them. The major ones are often better to defer. They usually need more time for reflection. Besides, if you forget them, they'll remind you.

Wolf's Law of Meetings:
The only important result of a meeting is agreement about next steps.

Wolf's Law of Planning:
A good place to start from is where you are.

Wolf's Law of Tactics:
If you can't beat them, have them join you.

Woltman's Law:
Never program and drink beer at the same time.

Woman's Equation:
Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.

Wood's Law:
The more unworkable the urban plan, the greater the probability of implementation.

Woods's Incomplete Maxims:
  1. All's well that ends.
  2. A penny saved is a penny.
  3. Don't leave things unfinishe

Woods's Laws of Procrastination:
  1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
  2. Procrastinate today! Tomorrow may be too late.
  3. NOW is the time to do things later!
  4. If at first you don't succeed, why try again?

Woodward's Law:
A theory is better than an explanation.

Worker's Dilemma Law (Management's Put-Down Law):
  1. No matter how much you do, you'll never do enough.
  2. What you don't do is always more important than what you do do.

Wynne's Law:
Negative slack tends to increase.

Wyszkowski's Theorem:
Regardless of the units used by either the supplier or the customer, the manufacturer shall use his own arbitrary units convertible to those of either the supplier or the customer only by means of weird and unnatural conversion factors.

Wyszowski's First Law:
No experiment is reproducible.

Wyszkowski's Second Law:
Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough.
Murphy's home
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